In Unit 3, you’ll explore a career path that interests you. In our SWA readings, we’ll study some trends for future employment Harvard Business Review (SWA 4) and study the Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Outlook Handbook .
Then, in MWA 3, you’ll write an essay that analyzes a career path and its “fit” for future you. You will use the sources available to you to help you with this.
In an analysis, you take something apart and show the relationships between those parts in order to make a point about the topic. So in this instance, you’ll take apart factors and trends about the career and the job market, and then show relationships between those things and your own skills and needs.
Suggested structure:
Introduction:
Hook: introduce the career path itself, using a statistic from one of our sources in Unit 3, in a way that creates curiosity in your audience. You can of course follow up the statistic with your own questions or thoughts, to guide your reader to thinking more about it.
Be sure to cite the statistic, whether you put it in your own words or quote the source it comes from!
Background information: provide an overview of the subject, meaning you’re just setting a base understanding of the career and your own interest in it. The key is not to give away too much too soon, but equip your readers with enough knowledge to read your paper.
Thesis: compose one sentence that lays out an analysis of the factors you consider important in deciding how well the future career fits you and your future skills and needs. This should list the ideas of your body paragraphs, in order.
Body paragraphs (4 or more)
First, you’ll need to brainstorm and plan out the order for all the factors you want to discuss in this paper. It may include trends that are relevant from our SWA 4 reading. It may include the various “takeaways” you gained from studying the Occupational Outlook Handbook.
Also, these may be positives or negatives, and you can certainly mix/match and do some of each, if you think the career has drawbacks. It’s up to you!
Topic sentence: start each body paragraph with a sentence that states a trend or factor concerning your career path, and then connects that concept to you and your own skills/needs.
Explanation: take the time to develop an understanding in the reader about this idea. This is the “what/how/why this works” portion of a paragraph.
Evidence: within each body paragraph, you’ll want to prove you are knowledgable by bringing in other sources as your credible “backup.” You might be making up these ideas, but by bringing in credible sources, your audience will trust you more.
Another type of evidence that is appropriate to this paper is examples and details about your own “fit” for each paragraph idea. You may have stories, facts, background to share about yourself and where you live.
Reset: think of this end of each body paragraph as a way to touch back on the main idea of the paper: your relationship with the career you’re analyzing. This is also a place to “signal” that a new idea is coming.
Conclusion
Restate your thesis: Use new language here, and provide a very strong statement that provides the “final analysis” of the career path you’ve been studying. Is it a good fit for you and why? List the factors you’ve discussed in your paper. And try to do all of this in one sentence or a series of related sentences.
Takeaway: In ending the final paragraph, provide readers something to “take away” from reading your essay. Ideally, it would be something about why this career matters, or why it matters to make the right choice for yourself in your future career. It should end strong with purpose!