Below are two examples of personality portrait features written by students. Check out these two examples before writing one of your own.
Example No. 1
The only thing Codi Mills
wanted as her going away present was a bookshelf.
That was the only gift Mills
asked her father for as she left for San Jose State University to follow her
passion in photography.
When Mills got to SJSU,
she took all of the neat little decorations and items off her dorm room shelves
to make room for all the books she purchased from the Martin Luther King Jr. Library
patio sale on the San Jose State University campus.
“It was the greatest Tetris
game of my life,” Mills said, about fitting all the books she purchased in one
bag.
Mills loves to read
anything, and attributes books to the person she is now and to the career path
she has chosen in photography claiming that her personality was shaped by books
from a young age.
“Books made me a
thoughtful person,” said Mills. “I got that sense of freedom and imagination
from books.”
According to Art Mills,
Codi’s father, Codi picked up reading on her own with no influence from her
parents.
“Some people enjoy
watching TV, but for her it was reading,” said Art Mills. “She at one point
mentioned that she was going to read the dictionary.”
Codi’s family runs a
self-employed business known as Mills’ Plumbing and they didn’t have much time
for vacations when she was young.
“We would take Codi on
things called mini-vacations where we would drive back roads,” said Art Mills.
Codi also remembers that
during those mini-vacations she would climb an old oak tree in her backyard and
pretend she was a heroine.
But, probably more
important to Codi were her books and how they brought her so many viewpoints
and interpretations on life. “It’s the ability to see life through a different
lens,” said Mills.
This is where Codi ties
reading into photography, the connection between telling people’s stories and
yet leave them up to interpretation.
“Interestingly enough, I don’t want to be in
written journalism,” said Mills. “Writing alienates sections of the world, and
I would hate a universal language.”
Codi explained that this
is where the value of photography lies, in the universal language of visuals.
“In photography you can
freeze the truth as it is,” said Mills.
According to Codi’s
boyfriend, Quenton Fletcher, photography is a subject that naturally comes to
Codi. “It fits her very much because she’s an outgoing person who loves to
explore new places and this is definitely something that will allow her to
adventure until her heart’s content.”
Codi’s father also
believes in her choice of study. “She could do anything, she is an excellent
student, but I think she can change the world.”
Codi’s goal is to change
the world and educate people about different cultures and show them places that
they couldn’t normally see for themselves.
“If I can do one small
part and educate one person, that’s enough.”
The girl who reads and imagines herself in
faraway lands plans to bring those lands to people through the pictures she
takes.
Example No. 2
Seeing him wearing a Giants baseball cap and T-shirt, it is easy
to assume Nick Esposito’s greatest passion is baseball and it is easy to be
wrong.
This revelation is even more of a shock considering Esposito’s father
is a 27-year veteran of coaching high school baseball and both of his brothers
play baseball.
Even with all of this baseball influence, for 21-year-old
Esposito, classic rock is where his interest really lies.
For Esposito, baseball never held his interest because he felt
it was boring.
“I played until the fourth grade,” said Esposito. “I was the one
in the left field picking the grass.”
Even though Esposito is not consumed by it, baseball draws the
Esposito family together.
When Esposito and his brothers, Nate and Vinny, were young, they
used to go to Granite Bay High School to play with the baseball team their
father, Pat Esposito, coached.
“We all support the Giants and Yankees, and the whole family
(aunts, uncles and grandparents) have fun with it,” said Esposito’s mother,
Julie Esposito.
Although Esposito grew up with an extensive baseball influence
from his father, Pat Esposito gave more to his son than just baseball by
introducing him to classic rock.
“When I was a kid, my dad played that music for us all of the
time,” Esposito said.
His father’s influence on his choice in music shows up in
Esposito’s favorite band, Led Zeppelin, who were what his father would play,
above the protests of his mother who wanted more positive music around the
kids.
“At home when they were little, we had Christian Rock most of
the time,” said Julie Esposito.
This restriction never stopped Esposito from developing a much
deeper appreciation in junior high school for classic rock.
He took piano and guitar lessons and went on to give a few performances
in high school of classic rock.
“He’s like a jukebox for Classic Rock, and it’s awesome to see
how excited he gets when a good song comes on the radio,” said Mallory
McCarron, Esposito’s girlfriend of nearly two years.
In Esposito’s opinion the most important thing about the music
is not the lyrics but instead is the sound of the song.
He appreciates the ingenuity of classic rock bands as they
pushed back against the happy musical styles of the 1950s while dealing with
Vietnam.
“The sound is in your face,” Esposito said. “You can look at a
society through the music.”
Even in other genres of music like Heavy Metal and Punk,
Esposito is able to set aside the intense vocals and focus on the music that is
backbone of the songs.
When McCarron decided to broaden his musical horizons into
Country, she made sure to take into account Esposito’s love of sound.
“I knew he loved big guitar ‘electric’ solos, so I showed him
artists such as Jason Aldean and Brad Paisley,” McCarron said. “They really
know how to rock a good electric guitar solo.”
Esposito’s appreciation for classic rock is deeper than just its
aesthetics because he believes that it served as a gateway for the styles of
music that are around today.
The classic rock style and sound eventually allowed genres like
Rap, Heavy Metal and Punk to spring up, while the more acoustic music of the
1960s lead into the Easy Listening genre.
“It’s like comparing dinosaur bones to modern day birds,”
Esposito said. “Classic rock was the precursor for everything that we have
now.”
Although Esposito admits that he enjoys all genres of music, he
has a problem with what he feels is the creation of music not for the music’s
sake but for the fame of the artist.
“Mainstream music has forgotten its purpose. We’re missing the
point.”
If Nick Esposito walks by dressed in his Giants fan gear with
headphones in his ears, don’t be surprised if classic rock is playing instead
of the latest baseball game because for him, the music is the most important
part.
