For this outcome, I chose Jonah Lehrer’s, “The Future of Science… Is Art?” to display my annotation skills and decisions. When I annotate, I take it as a chance to grasp a good understanding of the piece I am reading. There’s a major difference between just reading versus and annotating. My biggest skill when I annotate is rewriting what the text is trying to say, but stating it in ways that I would understand it. For example, an exact annotation from Johnah Lehrer’s essay I had was, “So far in this essay, we have discussed all these scientific discoveries, but they were countered by how we hit a stand.” I am able to text paragraphs of writing, and put them in terms I understand. Just like Susan Gilroy says that you should, “Get in the habit of hearing yourself ask questions: ‘What does this mean?’” I can’t stress enough how much I do this. I ask countless questions when reading papers. Most of the time these questions get answered a few lines later, but that’s okay. The fact that I am able to engage with the text that closely is the most important part. I consider this as interrogating the essay . As weird as it sounds, I put myself in a conversation with the essay because I learn best in conversation than from just reading something. Even though this is a “silent” conversation, this idea of going back and forth with the text is the most important part of annotating. Another thing Gilroy talks about is how you need to annotate to “set course readings against each other to determine their relationships.” This couldn’t be more accurate with Yo-Yo Ma and Johah Lehrer essays. If I were to have just read those essays, I would say they have similar ideas, but there isn’t a lot of meaning in them. However, once you annotate, a whole new world of ideas is opened up, and that is when you are able to draw conclusions with evidence and write an essay. Annating for me has always helped me engage my reading, and better understand the text by reading between the lines and reading the secret story that’s hidden.
As you can see below, my way of annotating my not make sense to you, but it makes sense to me, and that’s all that important. I call it an “organized mess.” I know exactly what the essay is about, what quotes I feel are important, what stuck out to me, any questions I had, and so much more. Also attached below are paragraph examples I wrote that shows how I integrate my ideas from my annotations. The quotes I used are ones that I had underlined, and some of my ideas I wrote in the paragraph are also in my annotation margins. Annotation is key to fully developing an understanding to create well thought-out claims.
