I think exigence was the most difficult rhetorical element for me to understand. At first I confused exigence with purpose, sometimes believing it to be the same. However, this isn’t true. Exigence answers the question: What caused you to write this text? At first the answer may seem to be obvious, that you are completing an assignment for your teacher. But exigence goes farther than that. Exigence is the event or occurrence that pushes the author to create that piece of writing, the incident that prompts rhetorical discourse. For my Engineering Proposal, ““Emergency SOS Alarm from Brains Against Natural Disasters”, the exigence was Hurricane Marie in 2014, as well as the increased intensity and frequency of North Atlantic Hurricanes in general. These disasters led to hundreds of lives lost, power lines being shut down and mobile services unavailable, property damage and home displacement. My team was informed of these issues and decided that we needed to create a solution.