Writing a profile
The following essay is an example of the so-called profile essays (about a person in this case). In order to respect the person's privacy I have altered the name and used some generic reference instead of originally specific reference for places (e.g. her home town instead of the town's name, also a big city instead of the specific name). You can find out more about these essays on this website.
Some additional examples of profiles:
Born to be happy
Some people
simply make us believe that the saying “change your thoughts to change your
life” is not just one more cliché we reach for when things do not seem to be
going the right way. Jane Maynard is one of these people. After having left Technical
High School in her small home town as an aviation technician, she went to a big
city and tried to enroll in the Aviation College. She stayed there for a while
with her family, but after her application was rejected she returned to her
home town. Since that was the only faculty that she wanted to enroll in at all
and since there was only one airport in her town which worked with a very small
capacity and did not provide many job opportunities, she had to find some other
job which had nothing to do with what she had been learning till that point in
her life. This is something that would normally scare every young person but
Jane never left herself to be discouraged.
As luck
would have it she got a job in a bookshop very quickly. The beginning was
difficult. She did not have any working experience and, on top of all that, her
employer was a woman with a disability who often had mood swings and sometimes
was quite difficult to get along with. However, this job gave her a lot of
experience in working with people and encouraged her to enroll in a course for
accountants. Although she had no economic knowledge, which is usually necessary
to successfully complete this course, she still managed to finish it thanks to
the experience with doing the books in that bookshop. Unluckily, she lost this
job after two years because her employer couldn’t run the bookshop anymore.
Once again
Jane had to start looking for a job in a country that did not offer many opportunities
to young and inexperienced people, but unlike many others who did not want to
try out their luck in some career they had not studied for or who gave up after
they had been rejected a few times she was determined to find another job as
soon as possible because she could not imagine herself not working at all. She was
very persistent in her decision to support herself and be independent from her
parents as much as possible, and that is exactly what she has managed to do for
six years now.
Today she
works in one of the university’s copy shops. She took this job even though she
was not sure she would be able to cope with it. She had some experience with
copiers, but this job demanded much more organizational skills. However, within
a month she learnt a lot about copiers and became very good at this job too.
Although many people imagine this job as merely putting some papers on the
machine and pressing a few buttons, it is actually much more complicated than
that. It requires, first of all, a great deal of concentration and patience in
order to make everything function as even a seemingly small mistake could make
her waste material and time and thus she could displease both her customers and
her employer.
One cannot
but admire her for her capacity to stay focused on what is asked of her from
one person while ten other people are pushing behind that one and asking every
now and then for this and that. She does
all the tasks with such an ease and always with a smile on her face even though
the commotion in front of the copy shop would probably annoy most people and
make them grumpy and not willing to be polite. “You must never let people know
that you have a bad day because whatever job you do it was your choice to do
it. One can find satisfaction in any job
if one likes to work. I love my job. Thanks to it I have met some students and
professors of graphic design which I find very interesting and although I do not intend to study it, I would
like to enroll in some sort of course one day.”
Her
kindness and cordiality along with a good understanding of people’s characters
have made this job enjoyable for her because it gave her an opportunity not
only to learn something new, to improve her skills in bookkeeping and general
communication with people, but it has also brought her many new friendships.
This is why spending hours surrounded by machines, books, notebooks and all
other students’ necessities in a small space for 6 days in a week does not feel
oppressive.
In all the
commotion that accompanies this job, especially at the beginning of semesters or
in the period just before exams start, some funny situations are inevitable. Once
as she was giving some copied material to a group of female students, a male
student was standing aside waiting for his turn to copy some book. After the
girls had left she asked him, “Girl, what can I do for you?” She giggles even
now while she remembers the puzzled and slightly embarrassed expression on his
face.
In today’s
world where so many people are obsessed with accomplishing great things in
their lives or equally determined to see themselves as losers and their own
lives worthless if they do not make their dreams come true, it is so refreshing
to meet someone who loves their job and their life as it is and never feels
disheartened because some things did not turn out to be as they once imagined
them. One day she would like to have a copy shop of her own when she has enough
money to open it, but even if her dream does not come true I do not doubt that
she will be happy because she is capable of finding beauty in life unlike many.
by S.B.
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