For this course, the third learning outcome states that students must “Employ techniques of active reading, critical reading, and informal reading response for inquiry, learning, and thinking.” Explaining that annotating texts helps you think deeply and understand what is important through critical and active reading. At the beginning of this course, I did not take annotations seriously, often only highlighting or underlining phrases or passages within the reading, not posing questions or my ideas within my annotations. In other words, I was not actively reading and critically thinking regarding the text. Thus, I was not recognizing deeper aspects of the texts. This then made it harder to remember what each piece was about and why it was important. It also made it harder to go back and find important pieces later when I was writing a paper. Thus, with this realization, I knew I had to change the way I was annotating. I then began to only underline passages or quotes that I found to be important within the text, and I would then also note next to these passages why they were important to the meaning or idea of the text. Another change I made to my annotations is that I would write possible questions I had while reading next to the passages.
These changes and improvements to my annotations can be seen within the images above. When annotating the Francis Fukuyama reading, I demonstrated massive improvement. These include underlined passages or quotes that I found to be important within the text, and I would then also note next to these passages why they were important to the meaning or idea of the text. In this instance, I saw a theme related to the different ideas and science of what makes us human, and in seeing this trend, I felt that it was important for the overall meaning of the text, thus, I underlined it. Another demonstration of my improved annotations is that I wrote any questions or thoughts next to different passages, often building my questions and thoughts based on the different passages. One example of this is when Fukuyama says, “Let us begin by considering the consequences of the abandonment of Factor X or Human Essence.” In response, I said What if we abandon it and no consequences come, then do we have a Factor X? In questioning and building questions off of the passages of the text, it builds a deeper understanding of the importance of some passages. Which is essential in writing that incorporates that text. Overall, this improvement in my annotation allowed me to actively and critically think in regard to the different texts.
