BB&N Announces Junior Profile Winners
Four BB&N seniors have received top honors in the annual Junior Profile Contest, the final event in the cornerstone English project for all eleventh-graders. Deliberating over the summer, a panel of judges—writers and editors outside of BB&N—has awarded first prize to Daniel Kyte-Zable ’23, second prize to Allison Wu ’23, and two honorable-mention prizes to Alexandra Fabbri ’23 and Amelia How ’23.
After a pandemic-induced, two-year hiatus, the Junior Profile was back in place as the spring-term focus of English 11 students. The judges’ remarked, “Writers managed to wring meaningful and often poignant detail from the lingering limitations of the pandemic. . . . Physical description of each subject was sharp and lucid despite the profusion of surgical masks.”
For more than 35 years, the Junior Profile project has challenged students to harness their practiced skills in analytical thinking and writing about literature and apply them to a subject beyond the classroom walls. Over the course of six weeks, through several drafts, and with the ongoing feedback of their teachers, they produce an 8-to-10-paged New Yorker-style profile about the subject’s life work or a significant focus in that person’s life.
Among the professions depicted in this year’s pool of outstanding profiles are a Mother Superior, a chef, a WGBH musician, a farmer, an architect, a transgender woman working for transgender medical access and legislative rights, a Boston Public Garden maintenance employee, a florist, a beekeeper, and a used car salesman.
Please click the below links for a synopsis of the prize-winning profiles.
