FIRST WRITING ASSIGNMENT:
For a one-week period in your life, record your THREE observations of when you thought something was abnormal (if you have too many, just use the most important ones). These can range from ordinary social interactions with strangers, friends, and relatives, the content of television programs or social media, or any other phenomenon that made you think of abnormality. How did you identify this phenomenon as abnormal? Even if your feelings were initially based on moral considerations, idiosyncratic personal reasons or something else, please use the three definitions of normal presented in class (evolutionary/biological; statistical; sociocultural) (see uploaded reading materials 1/2/3 and lecture slides) to argue why this phenomenon might be considered abnormal. Note: It’s possible that the phenomenon that you initially thought of as abnormal might be considered normal from one of these three perspectives.
| Essay Structure | |
| Introduction | 1 paragraph |
| Observations 1 you believed to be abnormal
Evolutionary/ biological statistical sociocultural (It is quite possible that one of the perspectives may be normal. But you still need to conduct the analysis on three aspects and focus on the abnormal analysis.) |
4 paragraphs |
| Observations 2 you believed to be abnormal
Evolutionary/ biological statistical sociocultural (It is quite possible that one of the perspectives may be normal. But you still need to conduct the analysis on three aspects and focus on the abnormal analysis.) |
4 paragraphs |
| Observations 3 you believed to be abnormal
Evolutionary/ biological statistical sociocultural (It is quite possible that one of the perspectives may be normal. But you still need to conduct the analysis on three aspects and focus on the abnormal analysis.) |
4 paragraphs |
| Conclusion | 1 paragraph |
- Paper should be about five pages long, typewritten and double spaced.
- You should use Times Roman Font with font size 12 and one inch margins. Proper grammar and spelling are expected.
- Use APA style, the paper should cite THREE course readings (see uploaded reading 1/2/3), not lecture slides (I also provided the lecture slides to you so that it can help you understand concepts). Outsides sources are NOT allowed
- You should use in-text citations (You MUST use direct citations with the “Quotation marks”, Do not paraphrase the citations and this is a very strict requirement by my professor) and a reference page at the end.
The essay should have an introduction paragraph, introducing the purpose of the paper. No need to have a thesis statement, but at the end of the paper, you have to have a conclusion paragraph. Please don’t try to introduce new idea in conclusion paragraph.
You should have multiple paragraph rather than just 2 or 3 main body paragraphs. You have to start a new paragraph whenever you introduce a new aspect of the discussion. With that being said, you have to address 3 perspectives on normality & abnormality for each phenomenon you talked about. You are allowed and can use first person writing style.
