At the beginning of the course when annotating an article my annotations were more reactive than analyzing the content. It allowed me to try and understand what the author might be trying to convey in their writing. While it might not have helped me identify “why” the author wrote what they did, it allowed me to try and understand what the message the author is trying to portray with their writing. For example, one of the first texts I annotated was “The End of Food” by Lizzie Widdecombe where my annotations consisted of highlights and side comments. I would highlight anything that stood out to me as odd, or I felt I disagreed with. Then I would comment why it made me feel like that.

Moving forward in the course we started to discuss more about the “why” in writing. We talked about why an author might include this information whether it was to provide context or strengthen their argument. After that class discussion I started focusing my annotations on how an article was formatted to best portray the meaning of the piece. When annotating David Foster Wallace’s “Consider the Lobster” a lot of my annotations consisted of underlining and side comments focusing on how a certain piece of text supported or strengthened Wallace’s message. I started to look closer when reading the text because I wanted to understand why the author added this information.

In another class discussion we talked about how writing was like adding to the overall “conversation” and how an author would identify what has already been said about a topic then add their own ideas and interpretations to that topic. After the discussion I started to add to my annotations how a text might look in the bigger picture. I also started relating different texts to one another based on their similar ideas and formats. For example, when annotating “What the Crow Knows” by Ross Andersen I would annotate how some evidence would relate to a more worldwide scale instead of just in the context of the article. I also annotated parts that I thought were similar to texts I had already read such as Mann’s essay where he talked about Vogt vs. Borlaug.

Over the course of the semester, I have been able to build up my skills in annotation by looking at different texts and with the help of in class discussions. It has allowed me when annotating a text to identify possible relationships between different texts, question why the author include certain information, as well as looking at the formatting of different texts. Most importantly over time I have been able to identify how different texts add to their “conversation”.