Middle school English classes taught me to have a certain amount of rigidity or structure in my essay­–five paragraphs, a topic sentence, an example followed by an explanation, then a concluding statement. High school English classes were my first departure from that style of writing. The most memorial pieces of text I’ve read in these classes were memoirs and thus our writing, both personal and analytical, had a more freeform style. I’ve studied rhetorical texts in a rhetorical light before–the one I remember most would be Martin Luther King Jr’s I Have a Dream speech, but there were many others­–and identified the author, audience, purpose, tone and so on; however, I don’t really recall ever writing my own rhetorical piece. I think the ability to understand a rhetorical situation and utilize all its components is very useful beyond an English composition course. The various texts we’ve read since the beginning of this course incorporate this concept of rhetorical elements and how they create a rhetorical situation. For example, when writing an email to someone such as a government representative, the rhetorical situation is created by you trying to solve some issue or inquiry by the means of email and the representative who, as the audience, receives your email and responds in efforts to solve your issue. In this situation, elements like the tone–formal and serious–audience, stance, and purpose all create and influence the way it is performed. In contrast, if one is having a conversation with a friend or peer and trying to convince them of something, like converting to veganism for the betterment of the environment, the rhetorical situation is established by the person trying to advocate for something, the author, and the friend that is on the receiving end of this conversation and responds with their take. The tone for this situation would be much more relaxed and informal, as would be the purpose, language and genre. In both cases, the author is reliant on the audience for a response or solution to their problem, but the situations are carried out in different ways in order to achieve the desired outcome. I can see such a skill being useful in day-to-day life.