What each must seek in his life never was on land or sea. It is something out of his own unique potentiality for experience, something that never has been and never could have been experienced by anyone else. –Joseph Campbell
Good day! It is week 9 and that means we will be wrapping up in preparation for next week's final. I have one final assignment here described, which requires you work with a classmate in a pair or small group. The idea is to create a portrait of one or more of the individuals attending Ai and to bring out something of the shared student experience and the individual nature of your subject. As you are yourselves students here, you have that perspective and experience to aid you in the interview or dialogue, which is the first step to creating the portrait.
The Character Profile or study requires you present a "portrait" of an individual. It includes the individual's background to some degree and a look into their current endeavors, activities, interests, ideas and attitudes. To put it together involves an interview of sorts, really a two-way exchange in which the pair members dialogue to come up with enough information and first-hand impressions to write the piece. The purpose is to bring to readers a sense of the background, motivation, and personality of the students pursuing specific degrees or career goals, specific skills and interests here at AiFL. It will be a chance to exchange personal interests and ideas with others as you gather the information to present the individual(s) with whom you share class and common pursuits and perhaps personal concerns and lifestyles. I imagine the audience as perhaps students and others in the local community or at other colleges locally or nationally who would be interested to know the experiences, concerns, and interests of college students today and something of college life. So key will be eliciting from your subject individual(s) a sense of the background and personal aims they bring to their school pursuits, and to bring that information to life in the profile.
Some questions to ask to get your subject's story include the following:
*What's this experience or period of your life really about?
*What is the emotional truth of your life today? What feelings are you working through? What do you feel good about, uncertain about?
*How did you get to this point or place in life?
*Describe a past or current struggle in some detail to show the kind of challenge you know best.
*Who were the important people in your life? How did they influence or shape you?
*What are your near and long term goals?
We will cover in class how to structure this essay. In brief, it will involve framing your subject to support a certain thesis idea, which the life of your subject will illustrate.
There are two ways of structuring the piece. One is to introduce the subject in an opening paragraph, providing context and a lead-in that generates reader interest. (See the introductory paragraph description below for more details.) Imagine a target audience of your peers or some other reader group. Follow the introductory paragraph with a transcript of the questions posed to your subject and the responses elicited. Shape the dialogue so that the questions and responses, from beginning to end, are expressive of the subject's history, interests, and future prospects or concluding thoughts on this stage of life.
The second way of structuring the piece is to summarize much of what you learn from your subject, shape the main story line around a theme, and illustrate the whole with a few well-chosen quotations from your subject. The second way is the article or essay form, as described more fully directly below:
There are two ways of structuring the piece. One is to introduce the subject in an opening paragraph, providing context and a lead-in that generates reader interest. (See the introductory paragraph description below for more details.) Imagine a target audience of your peers or some other reader group. Follow the introductory paragraph with a transcript of the questions posed to your subject and the responses elicited. Shape the dialogue so that the questions and responses, from beginning to end, are expressive of the subject's history, interests, and future prospects or concluding thoughts on this stage of life.
The second way of structuring the piece is to summarize much of what you learn from your subject, shape the main story line around a theme, and illustrate the whole with a few well-chosen quotations from your subject. The second way is the article or essay form, as described more fully directly below:
In the introductory paragraph, the writer must say something of the personal impressions your subject makes in a face-to-face meeting. We want readers to feel they are meeting this individual in person; of course the impressions are those you have drawn in meeting and talking with your subject. The body paragraph(s) will recount history and current endeavors, any conflicts or issues the subject is adressing, and how they are being addressed.
The body material is meant to illustrate the nature of the personality and character of the individual subject. Again, the pairs or groups will be talking and exchanging information in an informal flow of give and take as you establish rapport and commonalities and differences. You will take notes on each other, specific background information, career goals, interests, concerns, etcetera, which later you will incorporate into the essay. You will unfold something of the life of your subject to illustrate a point about students or student life today.
Your conclusion will bring the presentation back to the central idea, underscoring it, and providing final comments. You may want to incorporate direct quotation of one or another remark your subject has made, as well, to give some sense of the individual's actual speech or voice. Dialogue or direct quotation is a dramatic device and draws readers into the presence of your subject. You may use present or past tense overall. Bringing a sense of the subject individual's physical presence is a means of creating interest and imaginative appeal. Description of hair, eyes, gestures, clothing, in some brief but telling way will allow readers to actually "see" the subject person as they learn something of the story he or she embodies in the role of student.
