Over the last few weeks, we have thoroughly discussed genres in my ASTU class. I have been familiar with genres probably since the end of elementary school and was quite surprised when we started talking about it in my university English class. I asked myself: “Do university students really have to talk about different kinds of genres?” The topic of genres seemed so obvious that you never really talked about it, let alone think about it. In my IB English class, genres were a norm that you never really questioned.

After reading the scholarly essay ‘Youth, trauma and memorialisation: The selfie as witnessing’ by Kate Douglas, I came to the realization that there is so much more to genres. I never thought that we encounter so many different genres in so many different settings on daily basis. In fact, reading Douglas’s essay on taking selfies at trauma sites and sharing them on social media provoked one personal experience that I’d like to share.

In August 2016, I visited the United Nations Headquarters in New York and participated in a model united nations conference. On the last day, we visited the 9/11 memorial. It was a surreal experience that I struggle to put into words. Walking around the two square pools, I felt so small and unimportant and I was baffled how a city like New York was all of sudden so silent. For a few moments, the sirens, snarled up traffic, heavy construction sites and large crowds disappeared and my focus laid on the memorial. There were hundreds of people around the two pools and almost everyone had their phone out and pointed towards the memorial. Everyone was snapping pictures and I wonder if taking selfies was a way of dealing with the sensitive situation. It seems that people don’t mind posing in front of a memorial where more than 2500 innocent people lost their lives. As Douglas outlined in her essay, selfies are becoming a social norm of witnessing situations. Nevertheless, I feel that certain monuments have to be respected and that people should refrain from taking pictures and instead pay respect to the people that lost their lives.

I learned that there is a lot more to genres than I originally thought and I now know why the topic was discussed in my university English class. Genres are not just categories of books, but prevail a deeper meaning if understood in the correct way.