Looking back at how I began the class with my writing and how I write now, I see that there is difference in how I approach and eventually compose my writing. At the beginning of the class I understood that certain genres had a specific role in society and how they need to be used in a certain way to get some form of uptake. But now I see that there are more layers to writing in certain genres and that each genre has a defined structure that in turn is designed to respond to the rhetorical situation or give information that audience will need. I now find that understanding the rhetorical situation the genre is responding to is now the first part of my writing process. From taking this class I feel like I have a new perspective on writing based on the idea of genres where purpose and structure is not necessarily based on what the genre is suppose to do or how many paragraphs or sections are written but instead building off of previous uptakes that led to this genre and finding a way to subdivide the genre into components that lead to the success of the overall piece.
Looking back at my experience in class I found that working in XML and reading the articles gave me a new outlook in writing. I found working in XML to be strange at first, but as I became more practiced I found it refreshing and very helpful. For project 2, I found that developing a schema was an extremely beneficial experience that gave me and group members an idea of how to examine a genre and build off of those findings to make an accurate model. Creating a schema allowed me to understand the importance of each element and how the combination of these elements ultimately lead to next uptake the author hopes to achieve. I think that using XML has given me a way to develop papers in the future because I found that writing was much more clear and maintained a strong direction throughout so I think using in papers down the road will be very useful. The mix of software and technology at first was a little bit overwhelming but once I created my first draft for project 1 I found that I became more comfortable.
Probably my favorite thing from class was probably the question of the day, I found it to be interesting and a good way to get class started. One of my least favorite things from the class was probably the longer readings, just because I found that I would lose focus while reading them and I found them dry sometimes. One thing that I found to help me and get me more engaged in class were the readings and class where we would examine or read something and then get into groups and pull together what each one of us were able pull away from the reading. Overall I found this class to be enjoyable and I find that I will be able to apply a new mentally when approaching future papers.
