During our first querencia, we were exposed to the three important styles of writing that we will be using throughout the semester, which includes Personal Narrative, Descriptive, and Natural History writing. Through our three prompts to reflect upon during our querencia time, we learned how to work with each style of writing.

Later that week, students expanded their skills of specializing these three styles by writing an anonymous excerpt from each piece they wrote during querencia time as examples of what each style looks like. We then put all of our examples into one pile for the whole class to pick out of and practice identifying each style.

After organizing the excerpts into the categories of Personal Narrative, Descriptive and Natural History and discussing the reasoning behind our choice of which category to place it in, Olivia designed double sided posters to hang up in the dining hall as a way to share our voices in the contexts of our first impressions of querencia.

“Have you ever noticed that trees never sway the same way twice? The color of the lights refraction on its boughs gives it away” and “the waves encompass all around them in great storms, then recede like long hands, dragging back all they can carry” were some profound examples of our descriptions of querencia. This assignment allowed us to let our mind run freely and document our surroundings while still teaching us how to write in very different styles.