Considering Genre

            The genre of a project can certainly make or break it. For instance, if you were covering a controversial topic on the fishing of aquatic animals, would it be best to describe what was happening? Or perhaps show them what was happening?

            I am choosing to write the college essay for Project 1. The reason I’m choosing this is because I feel like my issue is one better described and discussed in detail rather than briefly overviewed with pictures and audio. Genetic modification is something that needs a lot of detail and crisp detail in order to be understood. The idea of CRISPR isn’t something that I would be able to (visually) show, since it is happening at the cell-level.

Koonce, Brian. "Living Essay" 11/02/12 via Flickr
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            The primary genre convention that I will be developing is my enthusiasm towards the subject. I know that I am passionate about the field, but I just have to make others passionate about it as well. I will also be developing my writing conventions (varied sentence structure, length, word choice, etc.). Not only will I be paying attention to conventions but to style such as font, spacing, and margins.

            I plan to make use of the conventions in order to draw my audience in the most. For instance, I will not describe the process of genetic modification step by step because that will bore most people (other than the select few). I plan to make my project applicable yet informative by using intriguing style and word choice.

            I am feeling a lot more confident about this project than I was a week ago. I also realized that I am actually excited to do this project. This is mainly because I have never truly been given the freedom to research whatever I want until now.

            The biggest challenge that I see in creating this project in the amount of sources available. I feel like there may be a limited amount of sources because of how new this topic is. I am also worried that this may translate in to limited information on the development (and such) of CRISPR. I am also anticipating that most of the controversy will be one sided (against genomic modification) unless the individual is a scientist of some sort himself.