I had a pretty thorough understanding of rhetorical devices in high school, so I was able to further develop my skills in this course through the various genres we examined. I did not, however, have a thorough understanding of genres; I had never considered aspects of life that were not music as “genres”. Through this course I learned that different writing styles truly are genres, though, from brochures to photo essays. The extra credit assignment that required choosing an everyday object or item on FSU’s campus and labeling it as a genre really aided in solidifying the concept that anything can be a genre. I learned that this is because everything is targeting an audience and trying to convey a message in order to manipulate the audience, in a sense, to believe what the creator believes. I learned the most effective writing and portrayal can achieve this.    

Project 3 added to my understanding because I was required to not only analyze genres, like I had previously throughout the course, but also create my own genres and justify all my choices according to my audience and purpose. It challenged my practices because certain genre ideas I might have preferred would have been appropriate for different audiences, but because getting one’s purpose across to the audience was the main goal, adaptations had to be made in order to reach the audience. For example, I wanted to format a photo essay but realized that with young adults as my audience, gifs (popular among young adults and adolescents) would be even more effective, so I decided to include them. For my second genre, I chose a debate but had to make it appealing to college students, who might not all be interested in politics, but after my presentation would understand our attention and contribution to politics closely affects their futures as well. All that really complicated my theories and practices of composing was probably taking what I had created in project 2, a full-length essay, and converting it into two shorter, visual pieces that would represent the main messages of my paper because these are two very different things.

Overall, this course stimulated my critical thinking as well as the reasons behind my choices, because I was always pushed and challenged to go deeper into why authors made certain decisions and then why I did certain things as an author. I will therefore take this with me into my future courses, law school, and life after school in order to more properly convey my beliefs and achieve my goal: presenting my beliefs in the most effective manner possible.