Early on in high school—freshman or sophomore year, I cannot remember—I had a well-intentioned but overbearing English teacher who forced a certain way of annotating. Every book, essay, or article we read had to be annotated in highlighter and pencil, and we had to highlight a certain number of ideas per page and meet a threshold of notes per page. I am sure he was only trying to ensure annotation became second nature, however, the rules with which he did that only drew contempt for annotation. Annotation is a deeply personal and individual way of analysis, and the method one uses has to be special to them. Without the freedom to do so and assignment of meeting annotation thresholds, I started a bad habit of highlighting an idea because I needed to for an assignment rather than because I viewed it as important.
Later in high school I was granted the freedom to annotate in a way the best suited me, and I finally saw the value in taking extensive notes within the margins of pages. Now, I rarely read a physical book without extensively annotating it. I generally use a combination of highlighters and pen—it's a tad chaotic but it goes something like this: I highlight important ideas, underline and highlight very important ideas, then I circle it if I really want to identify it, then the final level is to draw a little exclamation mark next to the text. I try to write a small comment next to the text on everything I highlight—so my margins are generally full of chaotic writing.
Hey Noah! I had a similar experience in high school with an english teacher who required us students to annotate a certain way. Unfortunately, it lead to annotating too quickly and without enough consideration of why I was emphasizing the ideas that I did. I'm so happy that you've since found an annotation method that works for you! The little exclamation marks sound like an especially nice touch.
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ReplyDeleteI can relate, Noah! I think we must have all had the same teacher in some form. I can remember specifically highlighting ideas because I needed to reach some arbitrary number of notes per page, and I hated it. Your method of annotation is fairly similar to mine; I enjoy writing in the margin and underlining ideas that stick out to me. Nothing beats the sense of physically marking a book or the satisfaction of filling it with your own interpretations. That is, in my opinion, the essence of reading- to have a discussion with the author.
ReplyDeleteHey Noah, I can absolutely relate to your experience. During my sophomore year, I had an American Literature teacher who graded our class engagement based on the number of annotations we had for short stories we read. Whether I deemed it important or not, I must've highlighted or underlined at least a third of the text in each of the short stories.
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