Sie sind auf Seite 1von 7

Rosa 1

Marina Rosa
Megan Keaton
ENC 2135-07
8 July 2015
The Genres to a Great College Essay
When the word genre comes up many people immediately think about genres of music,
movies, or books. As Devitt stated, genres were traditionally determined based on the similarity
within these compositions, such as, the meter, the layout, the organization, the level of diction
and so on (Devitt 575). But as ideas have further developed, genre is also considered a
compositions kind, category, or sort (Braziller and Kleinfield 5). Therefore it comes to our
understanding that a music composer, for example, goes through a variety of genres in order to
compose a Rock song which itself is also considered a genre. The genres he might encounter
could be simple genres such as the brainstorming of the title of the song. Moreover, we can say
that genres are essentially the tools composers use to reach their final product.
When completing my application for Florida State University one of the requirements
was to write a 500-word essay on a specific prompt. This restricted my ability to choose a certain
genre for my composition, as the university demanded the genre to be an essay. Even though at
first I did not believe that an essay would express my personality well, I managed to work with a
genre ecology. The genre ecology allowed me to make the essay professional, yet a composition
that would allow the admission counselors at Florida State University to understand who I was
outside of the academic environment, becoming the purpose of my application essay. The next
genre that I encountered was the essay prompt, which was attached to my online application on
the universitys website. The prompt genre had the purpose of guiding me on what the content of

Rosa 2
the essay should be but it was also a tool for how to write the essay as the university wanted.
With this in mind I began to brainstorm some ideas and annotated them in a notebook. I decided
to use a notebook for brainstorm notes as my genre when brainstorming because I am a
kinesthetic learner and it would serve me best when thinking of what to incorporate in my essay.
I also chose this genre because I tend to work better when my ideas are organized, and in a linenotebook I easily did that as I divided my ideas into certain topics and subtopics. Likewise the
notes helped me understand how to expand upon my ideas, which in the end facilitated my
process of writing the essay.
After gathering my ideas and thoughts on how I wanted to go about the essay I decided to
communicate with my high school counselor to be certain that what I was planning on writing
would be what was expected of me. The easiest way for me to communicate with her to get the
necessary feedback that I needed to begin writing was through emails. This genre helped me get
my questions to my counselor quickly and easily. It also was very efficient as I could go back to
the emails at any time I wanted while writing the essay. Once I received a response from my
counselor on the questions that I had, she suggested that before I actually started writing that I
should do some research on college essays. And so I researched through the Internet on Google
and found sample college essays. After finding these essays I decided to print two of the ones I
thought incorporated best what college essays should have. This genrethe sample essays
allowed me to comprehend the format, the diction, and level of formality that was expected of
me in a college essay.
Considering that now I knew how I had to structure and compose the essay I decided to
focus on details that I would need to talk about in the essay. The prompt gave the applicants the
freedom of choosing what topic they would want to talk about within the essay; the topics

Rosa 3
included leadership, learning, service, and global awareness. Of the topics mentioned, I chose to
focus my essay on service since it was one of the aspects of the prompt that I could relate myself
the most with. But the fact that I chose to write about service required me to recall all the
community service I did in the past and the best way to find that was through my resume. This
genre allowed me to determine which examples of my service experiences I would want to write
about and recall the details on the services.
Once I had decided on the community services that I was going to mention in my
composition and my ideas on how to write it, I needed to put them all together and the way I
gathered all my ideas and examples for services together was through creating an outline of the
essay. The outline encompassed the way I was going to format the essay, the way I was going to
break down the content in different paragraphs, and what the main topics of each paragraph
would be. The genre of the outline also contained the main points of the essay and the exact
examples of what community services I was going to mention and in what paragraph each would
fit in. Lastly a genre that I worked with while writing the essay itself was listening to alternative
rock, more specifically the band Red Hot Chili Peppers. The purpose this genre served is that
when I am composing something if I am not listening to music I can get easily distracted by
people talking or by my phone, and by listening to music I dont hear anything else therefore it
forcibly makes me focus on just writing. I listen specifically to alternative rock because it is not
something heavy such as metal but it is also not something that will make me drowsy such as
instrumental music. It has beats and lyrics, which somehow keep me focused as when I write.
Even though most people I know do not like to work while listening to music, claiming it gets
them distracted from what their task is. In my opinion music helps me focus by involuntarily

Rosa 4
getting me into a rhythm in which I start writing faster while also being more effective with my
words.
The genre ecology that I used in this situation to compose my Florida State University
application essay indicates how I work as a composer and what genres I go through to finish a
composition and how these genres help me get to the final product. As previously stated it, I
always write under certain conditions such as, listening to alternative rock. But I also use
different genres to prepare myself before actually writing a paper, such as brainstorming notes
and the outline. Whenever it is my first time at writing a different genre of composition I make
sure to research and understand the features genre. Such as what I did with the college essay, as I
had never written one before, I made sure to go and research on the format and other details that
my essay should contain. Thus as the process of getting to my composition showed that in order
to attain what I wanted in the essay I made use of many genres, these genres also connected
within each other as a whole. The genres almost worked as a domino effect as one genre led to
another eventually leading up to the final composition.

Rosa 5
Works Cited
Braziller, Amy, and Elizabeth Kleinfield. The Bedford Book of Genres: A Guide & Reader.
Boston: Bedford St. Martins, 2014. Print.
Devitt, Amy. Generalizing about Genre: New Concepts of an Old Concept. CCC 44.4 (Dec
1993): 587-586. Print.

Rosa 6
Genre Ecology
Map

Rosa 7

Das könnte Ihnen auch gefallen