The term “Exigence” before taking ENGL 21007 was a mostly foreign term to me. After taking ENGL 21007 however, I learned that exigence is the motivation or the “what” that makes you want to write. Exigence requires you to react with a “why” for every issue or topic you come across. However it can get confused with purpose since their definitions sound almost similar. Exigence and purpose would always get confused when writing something or when brainstorming something. As the semester carried on I was able to understand the difference between the two and make my writing a lot more clear.

Examples of exigence can be seen in my memo about “Request for a new layout scheme for the NAC” (see figure 1 below), and in my group’s PSA on “Internships for College Students” (see figure 2). The memo needed the exigence to be specifically stated because it was something that I felt needed to be changed. My exigence in this case was my topic, and purpose. In the case of my group’s PSA we all felt that students should know about the internships provided by NYSERDA. In this case we believed that it needed to be spoken about and shown to viewers and readers. 

All the documents mentioned above can be found  in the dropdown menu under “Revised Assignments”.

Figure 1. Opening paragraph to the “Request for a new layout scheme for the NAC” student memo

Figure 2. Slide talking about internships from the PSA presentation