For this assignment we were tasked with picking a discourse group, a micro-culture based around individuals with similar hobbies, abilities, interests and the like, and describe why they were a discourse group using Swale’s six defining characteristics of an interest group as a guide. I picked long distance running as mine, given that I’ve ran and loved running for going on 7 years now and have been on a team for a similar amount of time, I felt I was more than comfortable in explaining the means runners communicate, our vocabulary, or lexis, and the other key parts of what makes running its own little culture. Describing running, as apparent from above, was pretty easy and I had no problem completing the assignment block by block. It was until I realized that I lacked a central theme and that I was really only answering questions, or filling in blanks described by the rubric and not really writing anything of value at all. Essentially I had to completely rethink halfway through the writing process how to do this paper. Originally the paper was described as something I could complete, as said above, block by block; rather it was the opposite, I had to think of the paper as cohesive, fluid unit and not just pieces to be put together. So I built around the theme of cross country being quite low on the totem pole of interscholastic sports when compared to sports like football or baseball. From there, the paper meshed much better and I had a common theme to base the sections around, making my conclusion feeling much less tacked on at the end. I took away from this assignment the importance of always having theme or reason to write and not just throwing sections together and calling something done.