One of more farvorite takeaways from this article was the idea that a genre acts as a “tool of cognition”; before we even realize it we are considering the form our piece of writing must occupy as we begin to imagine its existence. It reminds me of the way I handle projects in my art and sculpture classes. Typically we get an assignment that gives us dimensions, media, and a due date. Art has genres in the same way that writing does, but when we are given an idea of what is expected of us or who our audience will be, we know we can only craft a piece of art, or writing, that will fit in those parameters.

As for the ideas of boundary crosses and boundary guarders, I think it definitely depends on the particular mood I happen to be in and the attitude I have about the genre I am working with. Being a guarder in the past has definitely led me to keep repeating rookie mistakes in my writing when it comes to genre convention; I was a chronic over-explainer and had convinced myself that the genres I was functioning in required the excess of information to meet audience expectations until I realized there was a new forms of writing that appropriately satisfied the conventions of the genre while still creating effective writing. Then, I became more of a crosser, picking what strategies I already knew of and applying them to my writing when I see it could help improve it.