Employ techniques of active reading, critical reading, and informal reading response for inquiry, learning, and thinking.
In my annotations on Adrian Chen’s “Unfollow”, I said, with regard to a line about how the Westboro Baptist Church didn’t try to empathize with the outside community because they had nothing to learn, “Oooh, ‘They’ capitalized,”. While this may seem like nothing, this idea that those outside Westboro were so separated as to be capitalized as if they were from such a different category stuck with me. This disconnect between Westboro and everyone else in terms of empathy and community carried through to my blog post (Chen’s “Unfollow”) where I spend a large chunk talking about the disconnect from the Westboro community and the outside community that Megan Phelps-Roper transfers to by pointing out that, “the Westboro Baptist church has a very… aggressive way of teaching their beliefs”. And from here, in Paper 3, I relate this idea to a whole section talking about how unempathetic the church is and how they are toxic to those outside their community. I even included the original quote the annotation referred to and said that “The members of the church were only interested in making other people agree with them, not take into account other’s inputs or beliefs,”.
Before taking this class, the extent of my annotations would be underlining or highlighting portions of the text and that was it. I mainly left the interpretation of the text up to having myself remember the reading and what the highlights meant. Now that I’ve finished the course, however, I see how bad of a strategy that was. Using annotations on my texts has undoubtedly helped progress my understanding of the texts and has enabled me to figure out what sources and which parts of the articles to use as evidence in the various papers and posts throughout the year. It also lets me revisit a text weeks later and still remember what the article was about and what my thoughts were. Also, identifying the different types of annotations has let me categorize the different annotations for simplicity and for organization, and has let me learn more about myself and what I can improve upon when I read. For instance, when I annotate I tend to have a lot of comments that help me better understand the text as I read through it and track what I’m getting from the article. As an example, the annotation above that was for Chen’s “Unfollow” qualifies as an annotation that tracks my understanding. I also tend to question what the text is saying, either because I doubt the author or because I genuinely don’t understand what the author is trying to convey. This awareness of what I tend to annotate (and therefore focus on in the text) lets me know that I should try and focus on different parts of the readings as well, such as drawing relationships to other texts and keeping note of the outline of the article/argument. This awareness of where I need to grow as a writer and also the various benefits from developing the annotating habit throughout the course has made me what I believe to be a better writer. The things that I do mark down and annotate for though are generally things that make me pause to think and things that give me a gut feeling that they’re important, even if I don’t understand what is being conveyed right away. And when I go back through the article later to find points to talk about, I will look at what I put down in my annotations and decide if it is a good quote or point to mention based on that. Overall, my annotations allow me to better draw relationships between what the text is saying and other sources, lets me ask questions with more depth and connection to the articles and themes, and gives me more of a foundation to build ideas upon by the time it is ready to write about it in a paper.
See below for some of the articles I’ve annotated:
Annotations from Chabon’s “My Son, the Prince of Fashion”
My blog post on the topic: Chabon’s “My Son, the Prince of Fashion”
These annotations lead into Paper 1 because it highlights the relationship dynamic between Chabon and his son, a key part to interpreting what Abraham’s message about his identity is.
Annotations from Gay’s “Bad Feminist”
My blog post on the topic: Gay’s “Bad Feminist”
These annotations go into Paper 1 because it explores Gay’s interpretation of feminism and society’s expectations which is important when talking about the implications of the label.
Annotations from Kenji Yoshino’s “Preface” and “The New Civil Rights” from his book Covering
My blog post on the topic: Yoshino’s “Preface” from “Covering”
These feed into Paper 2 because it describes assimilation and the struggle that will need to be undergone in order to change our collective views on assimilating policies.
Annotations from Adrian Chen’s “Unfollow”
My blog post on the topic: Chen’s “Unfollow”
These annotations helped with Paper 3 because they helped me understand and build ideas around Westboro’s lack of empathy and externally harmful community.
Annotations from Leslie Jamison’s “Devil’s Bait”
My blog post on the topic: Jamison’s “Devil’s Bait”
Making and using these annotations enabled me to better understand the Morgies and also Jamison’s experiences with them, which helped to establish ideas about empathy and community.
