Week 1: Annotating Experience

     My personal experience with annotating is definitely mixed. I actually think annotating is a great way to take notes, and have done so unprompted many times to give myself an advantage. Where my dislike of annotating comes from is in the way it is typically assigned. In high school especially, I had numerous assignments that involved reading an article or passage of some sort, and submitting it after highlighting and annotating. However, many of these assignments graded on the amount/density of the annotations per page, often ignoring the actual content in favor of its volume. I often felt as though I was annotating just to annotate for things I didn’t need to keep note of. Not only was this tedious, but it actually hindered review because it cluttered the amount of annotations and markings when quickly going back over the notes to look for something I took down. Doing things I usually enjoy outside of class for no reason other than pleasing the teacher quickly drains my enjoyment of the assignment. I understand the worry that students skimmed over the reading, but ultimately it makes for worse academics. When reading books, I usually use one highlighter and one pen. I highlight important passages and phrases, or important events that I need to remember. With the pen, I will write important interpretations of the text, symbolism, and things to remember if I am to write about the subtext or dig deeper in the text. I also sometimes note important events that happen since being able to flip through and see exactly what is where is much easier than looking through all highlighted sections while guessing where a passage may be.