GUIDELINE FOR AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL OPTION (CORE II)
Imagine you are preparing your graduate/professional school application. The graduate/professional school
admission’s team wants to know about your background and how it has influenced your goals. This assignment is
designed to help you prepare for this task. The time you spend on this assignment will payoff in several ways in the
future.
DIRECTIONS:
In reviewing your history and writing your autobiography, concentrate on three areas of your life that have influenced
your present life/career goals. Your autobiography will include four sections (see below).
Use your best writing skills in producing your autobiography. Try not to simply report activities in each section but
analyze or review your experiences to uncover deeper meanings as to how they affected your life/career choice. It
might help to think about how a special person or event impacted your life in each section. Each section should be
about 250-300 words. Completed autobiographies may range from 3-5 pages (typed).
Your instructor is the only person who will read your autobiography. This paper will be returned to you in your portfolio.
SECTIONS:
1. Family Experience
Consider experiences and activities from childhood and how they may have affected your life/career
choices. You might want to focus on where you lived, immediate and extended family member
relationships, ethnic heritage, your gender, and family activities.
2. Educational Experience
You might want to focus on favorite subjects or activities in school from kindergarten through this year,
as
well as important teachers, organizations, failures (that caused you to evaluate your goals), and achievements that
have impacted your life career.
3. Work Experience
What work experiences (or experiential learning activities) have had an impact on you? This can include
volunteer experiences and internships. You might want to focus on relationships with supervisors or
peers, the nature of the organization, or the work activities (what you did and did not like about them).
4. Life/Career Goals
Write three of your current life/career goals or aspirations. Explain how your family, education, and
Work experiences are related to each of your goals. If your goals about education and occupation
are presently uncertain, try to project 5 to 10 years into the future and focus on what you will have
to accomplish.
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