My Annotation Experience

 I have had a love/hate relationship with annotating. During high school whenever my teachers told me to annotate, they gave me a spreadsheet of what to annotate and how to such as highlight in yellow a sentence about a recurring theme in the story or in green a simile or metaphor. Most of the annotations I made throughout high school were completely useless to me and I never even read most of them a second time. However, whenever I had a final or I had to write a big paper about a book our class read months ago, the annotations I made began to really help me out because I forgot some themes or maybe the structure of the book. I was really grateful that I made annotations because it saved me time when I was finding evidence for my paper or reviewing how the book engaged with a certain topic. Usually when I’m annotating, it looks like I am just setting reminders for my future self. I’ll write that, for example, this sentence has to do with the theme of betrayal, or this passage explains the relationship between two characters in the book. What I want to use annotating to do is for me to quickly find what I’m looking for when I decide to go in the text. I usually underline a sentence or draw an arrow from a passage to my writing of what important thing has happened in the passage/sentence or how the passage or sentence relates to an important topic/theme in the book.

Comments

  1. Critical Thinkers and WritersSeptember 27, 2022 at 9:13 AM

    I think you are identifying the value of annotations here when you say they turn out to be incredibly useful later. They can also help you pay more attention to details as you read that you might otherwise pass over.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Andrew BautistaSeptember 28, 2022 at 11:57 PM

    I can definitely relate to writing numerous annotations that I never ended up checking out, just to satisfy the teacher. It does come in handy when it's something I write because I need it.

    ReplyDelete

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