Prepare

Prior to beginning work on this assignment, read Chapter 4 and Chapter 5 in your course textbook, review your previous work in this course, as well as your instructor’s guidance and lecture materials. This assignment is an opportunity to develop a stronger sense of your goals while continuing to hone your writing skills.

It is recommended that you look ahead to the Week 3 Written Assignment and Week 5 Final Paper guidelines to help you develop a narrative arc—beginning, middle, and end—that begins with this assignment and which will work toward the requirements of those later assignments. Each assignment is designed so that it can lead to the next. Click the links below to access the Week 3 and Week 5 assignments. 

 ENG121 Narrative Arc

• Wk 2: Personal-Professional Narrative Paper

Write

Your paper will have an introduction paragraph that will include your thesis sentence and identifies your chosen major or career path, and a conclusion paragraph that helps resolve the narrative. Additionally, your body paragraphs will be expected to address these ideas:

• Describe an experience that significantly shaped who you are as a person and informed your personal ethos.
  • Use clear and descriptive language to evoke a sense of the gravity of this experience.
• Interpret the events that brought you to your choice of major or career path.
  • Why is it meaningful to you?
  • Is it your passion or is it more practical?
  • If it’s a practical choice, how do your passions feed into it?
• Provide an example of one of the major challenges to achieving your goal.
  • Instead of focusing on a logistical and time-based challenge (such as attaining a degree and/or certification), discuss a challenge rooted in the particular skills you will have to demonstrate, or a mindset challenge or some combination of both. 
• Analyze how your personal ethos prepares you to overcome the above challenge(s).

For assistance with your assignment writing a quality thesis statement, see the following resources developed by the Writing Center. 

The Personal-Professional Narrative paper, 

Carefully review the Grading Rubric (Links to an external site.) for the criteria that will be used to evaluate your assignment.