My writing processes for WP2 and WP3 felt very different. In writing project two, I used the schema to respond to my rhetorical situation; I wrote based on the sections outlined in our research. For writing project three, it felt like I trying to conform my writing to the schema. I can attribute this feeling to two different factors. First, I wrote the majority of my science blog post away from a computer, I was at a seminar and my computer makes loud clicky keyboard noises so I used a notebook. This could contribute to the fact that I didn’t have a super firm grasp on the exact structure of the document. Also, I wrote it in pieces throughout the day, leading me to have rather disjointed sections of writing that I had to fit into the schema post hoc. The other reason that I have for this feeling is that I didn’t have a hand in creating the schema. For writing project two, I had intimate knowledge of the schema because I helped create it after studying examples of the genre. Beyond the problems that I, personally, had with the schema, it definitely felt appropriate to my rhetorical situation. This feeling of appropriate-ness, is likely attributable to the fact that I chose my question with this genre in mind. However, the schema did help me write as it added some amount of structure; for example, I was forced to think about the exact scientific principles associated with my question. My use of the schema was definitely most informed by looking at examples of my peer’s work; I used the documentation somewhat, but examples were most helpful. I think that, on a documentation level, the use of the specific topic, technical principle, and important idea tags could be made more explicit. When using those three tags, among others, it was often unclear the ordering they were supposed to go in and whether or not they were required.
