I believe that writing is a form of self-expression, so as I wrote this essay I felt a bit restricted. I was used to adding my opinion and voice in my high school papers, so this assignment forced me to take a step back from that norm. However, it did make me focus on the articles that I choose, and I found myself taking a lot more time to really understand each one. I did this by highlighting any phrases that pointed to exigence, purpose, audience, genre, and stance. For each aspect of the article, I would choose a different color. This way, when I started to draft my essay, I already had a good idea of what I wanted to write about for each aspect of the article. It also meant that I readily had direct quotes that I could easily add into my paper for evidence. This approach was very successful for me because it helped me organize the exigence, purpose, audience, genre, and stance for each article. It also saved me a lot of time because I was able to easily locate what I needed instead of rereading the entire article.