Genres in Technical / Professional Writing

            My original internship experience could be considered unsuccessful.   It did not really go as planned. Originally, my internship was with the Southeast Kansas Humane Society of Crawford County.  My role was to find grants and then apply for them by filling out the applications and writing grant proposals, which is a specific genre within itself.  Unfortunately, I was unable to do my job because of ineffective communication.  I found multiple grants for which I thought we could apply, but it was extremely difficult for me to get the information that I needed.  Because of that, I did not complete and submit one grant application in the 6 or 7 weeks that I was working with them. 

            Since my internship with the Humane Society was unsuccessful, I was told to stop working with them and I started a new internship with Dr. McDaniel.  Now, I will be working on an instructional design project for a program called Scalar.  This is a program that will be used in the new Professional Writing program. It is a publishing platform that is also very interactive.  I just started working on this new internship this week, so I do not really know what genre I will be using to complete this project. 

            From what I know about this new project and what I have learned about Scalar, I can assume that I will be writing in an academic and professional genre.  This is something that will be used by a diverse group of students, so it needs to be applicable to a wide variety of individuals.  Since my project will be used as an introduction to this program, it also needs to be easy to use and understandable. 

            This genre that I will be writing in could change depending on the situation.  If I was writing for a very specific group of people instead of a diverse group of students, then I could use a genre more related to their field.  For example, if I was creating this project for a group of sociology students, then I could pick a topic and genre that is connected to their interests.  By writing in a general, academic, and professional genre, multiple people will be able to benefit from my project. 

            As I get started and actually get some writing done, I may realize that I need to do this project in a completely different genre.  I think this new internship will be a trial and error experience until figure out exactly how I want to tackle it.