Katie Gerstenberg: Blog 2

My experience with genre writing is a tad unique. I did not start learning about different types of genre writing until I began college four years ago. Back in high school, I attended a prestigious catholic school, Cathedral Catholic High School. I'm not saying their views were "narrow minded," but everything seemed to be their way, or the high way. Everything I wrote was professional, strict formatting, perfect, or else you did not receive the grade you had opted for. When I started college, I learned about several styles of writing, and I absolutely loved it.
Referring to the reading Devitt, I find it admirable that it was noted that it was acknowledged that "as rhetorical forms that come to feel normal, genres seem too thoroughly ideological to be taught in classrooms that aim to enable students to create their own universes within their existing political and social structures" (340). This caught my eye because teachers and professors can guide a student to become a good writer; however, their own ideas, experiences, and memories are what creates that outstanding paper. Each genre comes with a guideline on how it should turn out, but each individual adds their own "spice" to the paper that cannot be taught, for interpersonal experiences makes a genuine, unique, credible paper. My experiences with genres is that I was never allowed to be personable due to the format and expectations that were carried out throughout my time in high school. With that being said, I am looking forward to the opportunity to expand my knowledge on writing in this course this semester.
To me, Devitt describes "genre" as an umbrella term that is filled with social, cultural, individual, historical ideas and norms. Genre is such a broad term that provides all opportunities to expand writing to get a point or story across. Now that I have spent four years in college, I have been given several opportunities to expand within genres. For example, in my upper division courses, I write several research papers in APA format, and in other lower division writing courses I have been given a chance to write other styles of writing such as persuasion, philosophical, and so forth. Outside of school, I have written several personal stories, and I have written documentations for legal purposes. As I take my next step applying for grad school, I will be perfecting my cover letter, and asking professors to write me letters of recommendations. I will be writing papers on "why I want to be affiliated in this graduate program."
Devitt explains the idea of genre awareness and how important it is by correlating it to our own critical consciousness, "developing genre awareness is no easier than developing any other kind of critical consciousness" (348). Devitt explains that once a genre is learned, the goal is to use it at a level where its natural to step into that genre and write and discuss it. Genre awareness is critical because the more we are familiar with the style of writing we are writing and reading, we can develop a better relationship to the author, or if it is us writing that genre, we can help relate to the reader.
In my personal experience, the more comfortable we are in a style of writing, it is easier to get our point or story across when we are familiar with what we are doing. My first time writing in any different environment makes me feel like a robot, but over time and the more I right I feel at ease and can actually get my thoughts and feelings across.
Thats all I got on Devitt!
Thanks for reading!