OUTLINE FOR WEEK 2 PAPER

GRADUATE SCHOOL EXPECTATIONS AND FUTURE CAREER GOALS

You will be writing a paper that will be at least five (or more) pages long. It may be unlike any

paper that you have written before and will be unlike any other papers that you will be writing during

the duration of this class. The purpose of this paper is to assist you in critically analyzing your education

up to this point in your life, your experiences; whether academic, work oriented or personal, explore

your current needs and educational goals and your long term needs, educational goals and prospective

careers. Since this is not a research style paper, I will not ask you to follow any particular formatting,

such as APA, MLA, Turabian, etc., but I am requesting that you follow the outline indicated below,

providing the information requested, utilizing subtitles and citing any sources that you utilize from the

Internet, journals, brochures, etc. Please use the materials at the links provided in the previous

document or additional materials as appropriate to strengthen our paper. Please be as detailed as you

can be and although you may be tempted to write your paper in a familiar type of format, try to keep t

objective as well, pretending to look at your life from the outside looking in. Although I am using an

outline below to indicate what information you should include in your paper, your paper should not be

in an outline format. It should be a paper utilizing subtitles to separate the topics from one another. In

trying to determine how to label the type of paper I am requesting, I settled on a combination of

reflective, descriptive and analytical.

I.

Title

The title of your paper should be

: Graduate School Expectations and Future Career Goals

II. Introductory statement

a.

You may use the subtitle

INTRODUCTION

if you like, but it is not necessary. You will use

subtitles for the remaining sections of the paper. Any subtitles should be underlined

and in bold and at the left hand side of the paper. Use double spacing throughout the

paper with no extra spacing before or after subtitles. First sentences of new paragraphs

should be indented five spaces.

b. In your introduction, you should indicate the following: “This is a reflective, descriptive,

analytical paper reviewing the relationships that exist between my past academic, work

and personal experiences, my expectations of the graduate program, including classes

to be taken, skills to be developed and objectives to be reached, and finally my future

career goals.”

III.

Reflections on Academic, Work and Personal Experiences and Their Impact on My

Graduate School Decision

a.

You may use the title above as your subtitle or another with a similar intent

b. In this section of the paper, please share information that you are comfortable sharing

regarding how your academic, work and personal experiences impacted upon your

decision to attend graduate school and to select the Social Science Master’s Program.

You may share particular incidents that occurred, professors, employers or family

members that influenced you and your decision.

IV.

Expectations of the Social Science Master’s Program

a.

You may use the title above as your subtitle or another with a similar intent

b. In this section of the paper, please share what your expectations of the program are.

What classes are you considering taking and why? Are you focusing on a particular

subject area or do you have more diverse interests? Are there particular skills that you

are counting on developing? What are your objectives and/or goals that you want to

reach in graduate school? Do you have additional expectations of attending a graduate

degree program? Please provide your overall expectations. Why have you selected this

particular Master’s program?

V.

Career Goals

a.

You may use the title above as your subtitle or another with a similar intent

b. In this section of the paper, please share what your overall career goals are. Please

incorporate if appropriate some of the sources and associated information that were

provided in the document “Careers in the Social Sciences.”

c.

If you have a variety of ideas at this time and cannot identify one particular career,

provide information on any and all careers that you might be considering.

d. Explain how you came to your decision regarding what career or careers you may be

considering.

VI.

SUMMARY AND ANALYSIS

a.

You may use the title above as your subtitle or another with a similar intent

b. In this section of the paper you will now briefly summarize information from your

previous sections and discuss what relationships you believe exist between your past

academic, work and personal experiences, your expectations of the graduate program,

including classes to be taken, skills to be developed and objectives to be reached, and

your future career goals.” In other words you are conducting an analysis of how you

believe your previous experiences have impacted upon your choice of degree program

and its impact on your future career goals.

V.

SELF REFLECTION

a.

You may use the title above as your subtitle or another with a similar intent

b. In this section of the paper, please reflect on whether you learned anything about

yourself or your journey as you looked back over your life, your experiences, choice

of degrees and future goals.