MA 1: Professional Biography

Purpose

A professional biography (sometimes referred to as a “biosketch” in the sciences) is a genre of descriptive writing in which you explain how you fit within a larger community, how you got where you are, and what contributions you’ve made in the field so far. These types of bios appear in a number of different venues and take different forms depending on where they’re used.

Make no mistake, you will definitely be writing a version of this bio as you search for new careers or further your education. Resumes, cover letters, personal statements, conference presentations, publications, and even industrial “Meet the Team” pages all require you to clearly and concisely describe who you are, what you do, and why your work is important/relevant.

Overview

Now that you’ve outlined some of the best practices for writing professional biographies, it’s time to get your hands dirty and write your own. For this assignment, you need to write a 100-150 word professional biography intended for publication on the course’s Meet the Team page. I will upload the text to the website after it’s submitted. If you don’t want your profile to be uploaded online, please let me know. This decision will not hurt your grade.

This assignment might look short, but it will take longer than you think to write so allocate your time accordingly. If you’re planning on getting a job next semester or applying for graduate schools, then this would be a great opportunity to work on your elevator pitch (i.e. 1-2 sentences that you can use to spark interest in you and your work/interests).

Audience

As you’ve already discovered, this genre of writing is highly dependent on context. Where are you posting the bio? Who’s supposed to read it? How long can it be? What purpose it it trying to fulfill? In this assignment, I want you to imagine that you’re writing your bio for potential employers/PIs to see.

You never know where you’re going to end up working, so your bio should be easily understood by people close or tangential to your area of expertise. You don’t have the word count to delve into the details of your work. Instead, you should use the criteria that you developed in the Best Practices assignment to highlight why you would be a qualified candidate for some vague future position.

Style Conventions

Use a concise but formal writing style. Please remember that formal writing does not mean using unnecessarily complicated language or big words. Formal writing is best when it’s simple, clear, and respectful.

Proofread carefully to avoid any typos, errors, or unnecessary language. Please do not forget to run spellcheck! As a rule of thumb, make a habit of running spellcheck at least twice for any document.

For this document, everything should be in paragraph form, which means that you focus on using complete sentences and paragraphs. Make sure that all sentences are organized in a logical way, using transition words and phrases as needed.

I’ve written an example at the bottom of the Meet the Team page to showcase my expectations. 

Content, Organization, and Document Design Requirements

In order to receive a passing grade on this assignment, you must adhere to 3 criteria:

  1. Use the best practices that you wrote about in the last assignment to guide your work here, but don’t feel completely wed to your original ideas. If you read another student’s blog and found helpful or important information that you didn’t see, you’re more than welcome to add that content. The last assignment should be treated like the Pirate Code for writing professional bios: “it’s more of what you’d call ‘guidelines’ than actual rules.”
  2. The bio should also include a professional headshot or some kind of professional-ish photo, which will be posted alongside your text on the Meet the Team page. This could give you the opportunity to do a social distancing photoshoot one afternoon!
  3. KEEP AN EYE ON YOUR WORD COUNT! While the exact format of your bio will vary from person to person, you absolutely must stay within the allocated word count (100-150 words) in order to get a passing grade on the assignment.

Deadline

This assignment is due as a Discussion Post by Friday, May 15th at 11:59pm.