This selection from Susan Gilroy’s “Interrogating Texts: 6 Reading Habits to Develop in Your First Year at Harvard” really resonates with me. I think that the way that I read and annotate texts for my English classes line up similarly with how Gilroy says you should be reading and annotating. We annotate texts to question, criticize, and remember them, but most importantly to make connections. When I annotate, I often try to engage in a “dialogue” as Gilroy says. I do this by asking the text questions, and inputting my own comments as if I were simply having a conversation about a topic with a friend. This allows me to get all of my thoughts out, and pick apart what I am reading. This leads to me breaking down the essay, and finding the “skeleton” that Gilroy says we are looking for in a paper. When I am deciding what to mark in my annotations, I try to think about what am I trying to take away from the paper. I try to underline quotes that stick with me or that I think will be useful when writing a paper, or I write about something I agree or disagree with. One place I show this is in my blog 8, where I show my annotations of Jonah Lherer’s essay, “The Future of Science… Is Art?”. In these annotations, I underlined sentences that stuck with me, and tried my best to write what I was thinking as I read. Active reading is a skill that is always developing and is never perfect, so I will also often try out some new things while I annotate. One thing that helps me learn new things is work from class discussions. These class discussions allow me to think about the texts in different ways, and help me to understand the text in a deeper way than before. Some of my work is shown below. Reading and annotating is a very intensive process, and is something that requires a lot of attention, and a lot of practice.
