What does Dungeons and Dragons have in common with World of Warcraft, architecture, front desk agents, and deaf YouTube communities? They’re all sites where people use rhetoric, writing, and literacies to accomplish tasks and meet community goals. In this panel presentation, first-year student writers share how tools of discourse communities such as genre, digital communication, and embodied writing, allowed them to learn and thrive. Students’ methodologies include rhetorical analysis, genre analysis, autoethnography, and interviews.