Running head UNIT 2 ASSIGNMENT 1 Unit 2 Assignment St.docx

Running head: UNIT 2 ASSIGNMENT 1
Unit 2 Assignment
Student Name
Purdue University Global
Please note that this is a sample Unit4 Assignment to help
inspire and guide your own
original writing of the assignment. Be sure to review the
assignment instructions and grading
rubric, complete each task in the instructions, and contact the
instructor with any questions.
Commented [S1]: The title page and document
are properly formatted in APA 6th edition style.

For tips on formatting, see the Writing Center’s
Citation Guides page:
https://library.purdueglobal.edu/writingcenter/cita
tionguides
https://library.purdueglobal.edu/writingcenter/citationguides
UNIT 2 ASSIGNMENT 2
Unit 2 Assignment
One of the most interesting aspects of persuasion is that it can
apply to so many different
areas in life, from the personal to the professional to the
academic. A few months ago, I had an
opportunity to use persuasive writing on Facebook to help my
cousin reach an important
decision. She had posted about wanting to adopt a cat but
mentioned that she didn’t like having
to fill out the lengthy application that her local shelter required.
She posted a little rant about this
and ended it with, “Maybe I should just buy a kitty at the pet
store. It’d be a lot less

complicated!” As someone who has several rescue animals, I
have strong feelings about this
subject, and I wanted to address this in a message to her. I told
her about my experience adopting
my pets and how rewarding it was to know that these
surrendered animals had found a loving
home with me. I even did a little research and shared some
statistics I found: Over three million
unwanted cats are brought to shelters each year, and a
significant percentage of them end up
getting euthanized (ASPCA, 2018). Since my cousin is a very
down-to-earth person, I wrote
about all this in a way that I knew would speak to her: factually
and straightforward, with a little
humor thrown in (I included some funny stories about Tippy,
my newest rescue). She ended up
thanking me profusely for the message, and not two weeks later
she was back on Facebook
again, posting pictures of the beautiful domestic shorthair cat
she adopted from the shelter.
Another equally important area of persuasive communication is
that which occurs in a
professional context. As a future psychologist, I will likely be
responsible for proposing

treatment plans and collaborating on treatment plans in a team
setting as well. For the time being,
I am working in a call center, and I recently had a firsthand
experience with persuasive
workplace communication. My coworkers and I had been talking
among ourselves about how
nice it would be to have “Casual Fridays” where we could have
the option of wearing jeans to
Commented [S2]: This is a specific example of
persuasive writing in a personal context.
Commented [S3]: This is a great example of
how statistics can help you prove a point, and
since the student included a citation, the reader
can evaluate the credibility of the statistic, too.
Commented [S4]: Note how this example of
professional persuasion stems from the student’s
current workplace but also mentions the type of
writing she is likely to do in her future profession.
UNIT 2 ASSIGNMENT 3
work instead of our usual business casual attire. I decided to
broach this subject to my boss in an

email. Even before I started writing it, I knew I wanted this
email to be precise, clear, focused,
and respectful in tone. I also wanted to pitch the idea in a way
that would make it appealing.
After some thought, I came up with the idea of making Friday a
“Dollars for Denim” day where
each employee could donate one dollar in exchange for wearing
jeans; the money we collect
would go to one of the charitable organizations our company
has supported in the past, such as
the March of Dimes. I described my idea and added another
persuasive element by discussing
how a Dollars for Denim day could help with morale boosting
and team building, which are two
things I know my boss cares about. Once the email was written,
I proofread it carefully to ensure
that everything was correct, that my word choices were
appropriate, and that my message kept a
positive tone throughout. My boss ended up liking the
suggestion so much that she approved my
proposal and asked if I would like to be responsible for sending
a company-wide email and
making a flyer to promote it.

In contrast to personal writing and professional writing,
academic writing carries with it
an expectation of deeper critical thinking and the ability to
produce and cite evidence to support
a claim. When I took CM107, I was fortunate to have a couple
of classmates who were generous
with their feedback on the Discussion Boards and always
offered constructive advice. At times
this advice led me to perceive my own ideas in a whole new
light and gave me more than one “a-
ha!” moment. I specifically remember one classmate who helped
me out with my thesis
statement when I was struggling a little with my draft work. I
had been thinking of writing a
paper about PTSD because it directly relates to my future career
field; however, I couldn’t decide
whether I wanted my thesis to focus on changing perceptions of
PTSD or new treatments in
PTSD, such as EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and
Reprocessing). My classmate
Commented [S5]: Note the transition here that
shows this example will contrast with the earlier
ones.
Commented [S6]: Thinking about one’s

audience is always critical. Defining an acronym
is one way to do this. The student realized that
readers would know what PTSD is but be less
likely to know what EMDR means, so she
explains the acronym.
UNIT 2 ASSIGNMENT 4
mentioned some of the possible advantages and disadvantages
of writing about each aspect of the
topic and referenced the unit Learning Activities to remind me
of the criteria for a good working
thesis statement. Ultimately, he suggested that the topic about
treatment might be more relevant
to my work and would better suit the assignment criteria. After
reviewing his suggestions, I
could see that he was right. The benefits of this ended up being
twofold. My classmate’s helpful
tone and use of textual evidence persuaded me to visualize my
topic and purpose more clearly,
which led to composing a successful assignment. Even more
importantly, the classmate’s
feedback served as an example of excellent discussion work,

which I have tried to emulate in my
responses to other classmates ever since.
UNIT 2 ASSIGNMENT 5
References
American Society for the Protection of Animals (ASPCA).
(2018). Pet statistics. Retrieved from
https://www.aspca.org/animal-homelessness/shelter-intake-and-
surrender/pet-statistics

Commented [S7]: Note that since the student
included a reference to a source in her paper, she
included a citation on the references page. For
tips on formatting the references page, see APA
Style Central as well as the Writing Center’s
Citation Guides page here:
https://library.purdueglobal.edu/writingcenter/cita
tionguides
Amoment of professional crisis and self-loathing
inspired Gideon Mendel’s photographs of abandoned objects in
the now-demolished Calais refugee camp. He had travelled to
the site to participate in a thoughtful-sounding project, where
refugees were loaned cameras to allow them to document their
own experiences. But it wasn’t going tremendously well; the
refugees had more pressing concerns on their hands than
documenting their own lives, such as finding food and
somewhere to sleep.
Mendel was disturbed by the level of hostility that cameras
provoked. “There were so many cameras coming in; there were
no gatekeepers, because it wasn’t an official camp, so any
photography student, tourist or sympathiser could wander in.

The general feeling was that the camera was an enemy of some
sort.”
He was also bewildered by the array of misguided benevolent
ventures converging on the camp: “Calais felt at times like a
music festival gone wrong.” During one visit in early May, he
watched as a Spanish circus came waltzing through the tents and
huts with jugglers and musicians, followed by a Christian
procession with a healing donkey and, later, a delegation of
sympathisers from Essex – all taking pictures. “They were
making a donation, and they had to be photographed handing
over the cash,” he says. “There were all kinds of weird and
wonderful and terrible things that came into the camp. I
thought, ‘What people really need is immigration lawyers.’”
He followed the procession into a church built by Eritrean
refugees from sticks and tarpaulin, and had just begun to take
some pictures when he was confronted by a refugee who started
shouting at him: “You fucking photographers. You come here
and you take our photographs and you tell us that it’s going to
help us, but nothing changes. The only person that it helps is
you.” It was an acutely worded attack, and Mendel became
“quite revolted with the idea of photographing in the camp. I
didn’t want to lift a camera any more.”
Assorted toys and clothing collected between May and October
this year. With no electricity in the camp, many possessions
were accidentally burned. Photograph: Gideon Mendel
He was already uneasy with the photographic tropes that have
emerged from the crisis: the lines of waiting, needy people; the
emotional faces of people trying to cross borders; the queues of
people stepping off boats; the images of people sitting around
campfires; the shacks. “The most infamous image of queueing
migrants is the one Ukip used so brilliantly, playing on the
sense that they are queueing to come and take stuff that is ours.
Even if the intention of the photographer is compassionate and
sympathetic, the usage can be problematic and add to the stigma
and the fear.”

But Mendel was reluctant to retreat from the subject. His work
has always focused on challenging subjects; his last major
project was Drowning World, a series of portraits of people in
homes submerged by flood waters, highlighting the effects of
climate change. The migrant story had a personal resonance. His
parents were refugees from Nazi Germany; his father’s mother
died in the Holocaust. He felt moved by the difficulties faced by
the thousands of people stuck in Calais.
So Mendel turned his gaze to the detritus left behind. His
photographs of abandoned toothbrushes and soft toys encrusted
with mud and sand give a powerful alternative portrait of the
human misery of the camp. Eighteen months of the refugee
crisis have made many in Britain hardened and desensitised to
the issue. The Guardian’s own online news consumption
analysis shows that articles about refugees are often clicked on
in small numbers. Readers have been cauterised to the pain of
the unfolding human disasters and are often jaundiced in their
approach to individual stories. The shock factor of distressing
images has waned through repeated exposure – all of which
makes Mendel’s sideways view more arresting, harder to skip
over. His pictures of flattened footballs, singed clothes, ripped
sleeping bags and recycled teargas canisters force you to think
about the experiences of the people who lived in the camp. A
picture of muddy children’s gloves reminds you of the utter
squalor that infected the whole site.
He has lined up worn-down shoes with the forensic precision of
a medical photographer. “The shoes speak of distress. Some
shoes are burnt; fire was a recurring thing in the camp, first
because there was no electricity, just candles, so a lot of things
were burned accidentally, and later people were torching things
before the demolition.”
Anxious to avoid the pictures becoming “ruin porn”, another
photographic cliche (used particularly in relation to the
beautiful images of post-industrial Detroit), Mendel was careful

to display the objects in as dignified a way as possible. “There
was such chaos in the place, I had this instinct to make things as
organised and neat as I could.” He made several trips to dig
around in the sandy wasteland, sifting through layers of rubbish,
asking himself, “How would someone in 1,000 years understand
what had happened here?” This activity was viewed with
bemusement by the camp’s inhabitants, but without the
antagonism that photography provoked.
‘There was such chaos, I had an instinct to make things as
organised and neat as I could’: a shot of 83 toothbrushes found
in the Calais mud. Photograph: Gideon Mendel
His last trip was made as the camp was demolished by French
police, and the inhabitants were bussed to nearby hostels, where
many remain, applying for formal asylum in France. Others
have returned to sleep rough in smaller settlements along the
coast, still trying to make their way to join relatives in the UK.
Just before the site was sealed by police, Mendel carted away
black bin bags full of rubbish: burnt children’s books (including
The Tiger Who Came To Tea by Judith Kerr, herself a refugee),
scraps of bedding, used tampons (a reminder, he says, of the
particular difficulty of being a woman in a camp of 10,000
people with just a handful of Portaloos). To the “non-delight” of
his family, he still has a collection of bits in the basement. His
project has provoked scepticism from his teenage son, who said,
“Dad, most people bring things to refugee camps. You go in and
take things away.”
While scouring the site, Gideon Mendel found spent shotgun
shells, predating its use as a refugee camp. Photograph: Gideon
Mendel
Mendel hopes that the pictures will “touch people on a deep
emotional level. I want to do work that makes an impact, that

touches people’s consciousness. I wish I could offer a clear
response and say, You can do this to help the situation; but I’m
afraid that isn’t there for me. The work is my response to this
world, where you have places of relative safety and places of
danger; places of wealth and places of poverty.”

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