To me annotation is a skill that one can get better at over time. This is exemplified by my progression of the meaningfulness of my annotations spanning from the first reading to the last. Page 4 of the Consider the Lobster reading was the first time I’ve annotated since high school. I chose this page of annotations because it visually demonstrates my actual reaction to reading this text for the first time. My approach to annotation for this reading was simply throwing down my thoughts. There were a lot of informal quips and remarks I threw in to act as argumentative responses to some of the points. I wasn’t exactly focused on coming up with topics for a future essay, I was more focused on expressing what I think. Page 1 of Out of the Kitchen, Onto the Couch is my most notable and well-organized annotation work so far. When annotating this reading, coming up with topics and a thesis to my essay was at the forefront in my mind. At the top of the essay I organized topic ideas, and next to “1. Julia’s Children” I came up with the proto-thesis. At the bottom of the page I included a little quip that randomly popped into my head during class discussion, which eventually ended up in my conclusion. I’m including page 15 of Out of the Kitchen, Onto the Couch because it was a paragraph that really shaped my essay. Out of all of the readings I’ve done, there hasn’t exactly been one paragraph that really led my thinking as much as this one. What was underlined in the paragraph were the points that I wanted to make sure I directly quoted in my essay. Additionally, above the third paragraph is a topic idea that ended up in the final version of my essay.
consider the lobster page 4
out of the kitchen, onto the couch page 1
out of the kitchen, onto the couch page 15
