Writing this essay was much easier for me than the first essay.  I found it much more catered toward my cognition to talk about the ways that discourse communities interact and assimilate with individuals from other communities.  While it was easier to find my ‘groove’ and begin writing this essay, I found that the complexity and depth of the topic made it much harder to write a well-balanced essay.  Juggling the different criteria and thresholds while also keeping it related to my personal experience and what I had to say about each community in general.  Writing the essay proved difficult in the grammar because of the mixed time frames I presented, forcing me to say things like “we weren’t appreciated” and follow it with “because we aren’t locals”, a confusing mix.  Writing about my personal experience was difficult as well because  at times I can run away on a tangent that I find interesting but would need far too much explanation to be relevant to the on-hand topic, because only I know the full story and range of connections.  I found while writing this that my understanding of my community and the clashing values of the communities I entered became much more apparent to me, allowing me to understand why certain things happened the way they did.  I now think about communities and regions in a whole new light, seeing less of the façade of character each community presents, but instead a deeper look at their values through interaction.  It has been really neat to see this new viewpoint while here at VMI especially, where the Rat Line, ROTC’s, and different classes all display different characters and values unique to them within the greater VMI discourse community.