Three hours of observation. Eleven hours of writing. Thirteen hours of editing. Juniors might spend this amount of time over the course of a month working on their Junior Profiles.

 On May 2, juniors completed the annual eight-to-11 page English project in which students write about an “interesting person at work” via interviewing and shadowing them at their job.

 Oftentimes, students have difficulty finding a profile subject.

 “It doesn’t matter whom they choose, provided they are interested in it,” Upper School English Teacher Allison Kornet said. “But I will say that sometimes, someone proposes the subject or they settle on one, and I’ll be like, ‘No, don’t do that one.’”

 Ms. Kornet sees some of the same careers throughout the years.

 “I’ve read 10 hairdressers, and there’s just no way I’m going to be interested in one more because I still haven’t learned how to cut people’s hair from these profiles, and if you don’t teach me that, then I’m going to be biased when I start.”

 An outstanding profile receives an A or an A-minus.

 “A profile becomes outstanding because the writer’s given us a reason to care,” Ms. Kornet said. “Outstanding profiles take us on some sort of journey into something that the writer has invited us to be interested in that is genuinely interesting.”

 A combination of writing and curiosity is essential.

 “All you have to do is learn how to see people with more curiosity, and that is the orientation of a good profile writer,” Ms. Kornet said. “Some profiles have beautiful sentence writing in them. But we also see profiles that have beautiful sentences with not a lot of human curiosity.”

 Sophia Stafford ’25 was awarded the first-place prize in the fall for her outstanding profile. 

 “My profile subject, Lygia, is a caretaker at a dementia care facility,” Sophia said. “Lygia was naturally really compelling. It was really interesting to see how she interacted with each of the residents and how much she cared about them.”

 Receiving feedback was a crucial part of Sophia’s writing process.

 “The most impactful feedback was from my English teacher, Ms. Ueda,” she said. “Ms. Ueda helped me see that my first idea was a little bit too plain, and she encouraged me to dig deeper into Lygia’s motivations. That gave more insight into who my subject actually was.”

 Sophia believes a successful profile entails both a unique subject and strong writing.

 “I think the main skill of the profile is being able to figure out what is unique about your subject and reveal it to the reader in a compelling way,” she said. “The beauty of the profile is that everyone has something remarkable about them, and the writer’s job is to identify and highlight it.”

 Elizabeth Velander ’26 chose a woman who works in art restoration.

 “I could tell she was super passionate about her job. … I was able to learn something that I didn’t know before, which made me more excited to learn about it.”

 Elizabeth believes a profile’s success depends on the writer’s skill.

 “A writer’s skill probably matters more than the profile subject based on how high of a grade you’re going to get,” Elizabeth said. “If you have a decent profile subject but don’t show their story well, you’re not going to get a good grade.”