The exigence of a document is the issue or situation that demands the document. This element was the most difficult to understand, but this is most likely because of the unfamiliarity with the word. Exigence in simpler terms is why you are writing what you are writing. While this sounds similar to purpose, the purpose of your paper is more closely related to what the document does rather than why it is being written. While genre has the biggest effect on our document, exigence is the most important because the exigence of a document is why that document matters. In Writing for Engineering, the class did not explore exigence the same way we explored the other rhetoric elements. While elements such as genre or audience were taught more in depth through our analyses, exigence is something we thought about not as students, but as people with values and morals. The exigence of most of our assignments tied into our desire to help others through engineering, and through expressing our desire to help others through engineering, the class came to understand exigence in the context of technical writing.