How do you write a high school research paper about a career?

Answer 1

Well, the first step is to decide what career you want to write about. Pick a career that interests you... maybe one that you would like to be someday. Picking a topic that is interesting to you always helps you stay motivated during the research and writing parts of the process. Next, do some research. For instance, if you chose the FBI, then you should go to the FBI website and read about careers that they offer. If you know someone in the FBI, you could ask them to tell you about the job. Find out basic things about any career... what level of schooling or specific degree would you need to get the job, what kinds of things are involved in doing the job, and day-to-day things like what kind of dress code they have, or whether there are special benefits to the job. For some jobs you would also want to find out risk factors... is there a high risk of death for that career? (Underwater welding, for instance, has a very high danger level.) Make sure you write down the website address along with any information you collect, so you can avoid plagiarism. If you got it from a book or a person, write down that information as well. After you have collected your information, then you want to start writing a draft. The best way to do this is to choose some important sub-topics that will help you stay organized. If you chose Undercover agent for the CIA, you could choose sub-topics like "Secrecy," "Risk," and "Training," and then go into each of those topics in detail. For some jobs in the FBI you probably wouldn't have to deal with risk, and with underwater welding, you might not have to deal with secrecy... so you would choose sub-topics more appropriate to those topics. As you put in information that you got from someone else, also add in-text citations to the information that you gathered. It depends on what style your teacher wants, but in High School most teachers use APA or MLA, so you will need parenthenses with the author's name and either the page number of the original source, or the year of publication. Refer to your teacher's guidance on that subject. Once you have lots of stuff for each sub-topic, you will want to go back and check your organization. You'll run spell check, and you'll see if there are any big holes to fill where you might need to do some follow-up research. Make sure you take the instructor's page requirement into account, and do more research if your paper is too short. Adding detail also helps. Go back and get some details from someone who has that job, and add them to your paper. Add in a section about whether you think this is the job for you at the end (if your teacher is okay with that). Drawing a conclusion from your research is great. Once you have enough content, and you've polished it as much as you can, make sure you read it to someone else. Make marks wherever you have to explain something or repeat yourself. Have them read it to see if they notice any mistakes as well... there are always improvements that you can make. Once you are satisfied with the level of quality that you have, then re-check your citations, write up your Works Cited or References page based on what information you included in your paper (don't include entries for informaiton you did not use). Again, you'll probably have to refer to your teacher's instructions for this part. Once you have the paper with appropriate citations and reference page, then you are ready to turn in your paper and hope for the best. ... remember that teachers are individuals, and that no matter how hard you worked, if you don't do it the teacher's way, it might not get a great grade... so if you have any specific questions on how to do something... ask the teacher.