Your task:Consider your desired academic major, or the field or profession you intend to pursue. Write a research paper that argues and proves the ways empathy matters in this area.

Your paper should be thesis-driven. It will have a strong argument that will be proven.
You will research your field and gather evidence to show the specific ways that empathy matters.
You will use a variety of rhetorical techniques — switching from personal narrative to analysis. Or from reporting information to a review of literature. Or from summary to analysis. You can switch to as many different styles of writing as you see fit. There is no limitation.
Every essay will analyze something. You must break something down into its parts to show how it works.
Pay attention to your voice — how are you going to achieve an authoritative tone? Why should I listen to you?
Pay attention to your audience — how are you going to both respect their intelligence and provide them new knowledge?
Position yourself within an existing conversation — who is talking about questions related to empathy or similar to empathy? What is the debate?
Be sure to define the term as it relates to your topic.
Suggestions:

If you are interested in marketing/advertising– what does empathizing with the customer have to do with selling them products? Or, does creating empathy in your customer a good tactic to sell items?

If you are in management — what does it mean to be an empathetic manager? Are there risks in being too empathetic?

If you are interested in the medical field — how do doctors and nurses learn to become empathetic with patients who are sometimes ornery, in pain, and difficult to deal with? Are there risks involved in being too empathetic?

If you are interested in teaching — what is an empathetic student/teacher relationship look like? What are the pros and cons of empathetic teaching?

If you are interested in studying a particular field: biology, physics, chemistry, history, anthropology, sociology, literature, fine arts, music — research examples of empathy in your field of interest. What does it look like? What does it mean? What do people say about it? (For example, in literature, you can study the way first-person narrators can trick us by capturing the reader’s empathy and thereby hiding or glossing over evil deeds or bad intentions)

You can really take this topic anywhere you want to go. Just make sure you are entering into a dialogue with a larger discussion. You are participating in a field of discourse. — Even if it doesn’t already exist, you can predict what one group of people may say and how a different group of people would respond.

Category: Essays