As part of an American Dream unit with my junior Am lit students, I have my classes investigate their own dreams and pursuits by researching a possible career they'd like to pursue as adults. It's a fun and informative project for them, and it pushes research and synthesis skills, particularly early on in the year when I schedule it. Students write not only narrative work but do a literature review that requires them to look at multiple sources of information to get a sense of things. You'll need to schedule some lab time with the students and you may need a few weeks if you want students to interview people in their field, but this is a flexibly-designed unit.