Annotating Adventures

 I know this is maybe horrible to say in an academic setting, and it is coming from a very narrow-minded place, but I think annotating makes reading even worse for me. Instead of reading, I am focusing on what I should write down. The pressure of a learning environment disallows most forms of learning if they do not align with what is assigned. This has caused major stress for me with reading assignments. Although in the end I am traditionally okay, I wish I was not forced into such a rigid annotation format in high school. This is counterintuitive to full involvement with the text, for me at least. I am a traditional underline and write notes gal, however maybe I need to try highlighters or sticky notes to appreciate annotating. In my experience, I find that a simple reading of text provides more memory input than when annotating, however I know there are many studies that say differently. I know in college I need to learn to annotate, because when I read I just keep everything in my brain instead of writing it down, which is definitely not sustainable. I am someone who loves to research, and I feel it would be beneficial to have a method to retain information in a more permanent sense. All in all, the method in which I take notes has worked up until now, but maybe will not work in the future. I look forward to learning about new methods and practices in college. 


Comments

  1. Javier MartinezSeptember 24, 2021 at 12:20 PM

    Hi Jojo. I agree, I tend to do the same thing where I just try to keep everything in my brain instead of writing it down even for things like my schedule or what I have to do day to day. Honestly though it's starting to catch up to me and become overwhelming, so I think I need to get into that habit too. I feel u.

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  2. Avery PiersonSeptember 26, 2021 at 12:25 PM

    I totally get what you are saying! Sometimes I find I have to read a page 3 or 4 times when annotating bc I forget to write things down or I get distracted by my annotations and then forget what exactly I am reading about. In highschool my teachers had very strict rules about annotating, but I find that when I get to choose my own method, I find the note taking practice a little more enjoyable.

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  3. Isabella FernandezSeptember 26, 2021 at 4:38 PM

    Hey Jojo! I can completely relate to many aspects of your post. Due to my language barrier at home and at school, reading books was how I learned English. So, of course, it horrified me later to learn that I needed to write in them. I had lots of teachers show me countless ways of annotating and then grade me based on the way I did their annotating technique. Once I found my way of annotating, it became more more enjoyable. I, too, love to do research. I always start my morning with an article or two about a world issue and I understand that it is important to find a form of annotation that will help us retain all the information that we are constantly researching. Hopefully our techniques will hold out for a bit!

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  4. Michelle BOctober 2, 2021 at 12:03 PM

    Many people feel this way, and it think it comes down to different ways of reading and enjoying a text: one way is just to love getting swept up into the story's content and the other is to create a way to get swept up in the story's meaning. The latter doesn't often pay off until later, when you have a bunch of annotations to look at and interpret, but it can also be extremely satisfying!

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