My Thoughts on Annotating

     Annotating has always been an annoying task for me. I despised teachers that would force me to annotate a specific amount of times or with a certain word-count target. Often, I felt as though I was fully capable of reading without annotating. The whole process seemed tedious and pointless. I would stress over how many times I had annotated on each and every page, usually to satisfy some teacher's rubric. Forced annotations make the process of reading feel like a chore. 

    It wasn't until later on in high school that I would begin to love annotating. AP Literature required a lot of reading, but my teacher was really laid-back on annotating. She allowed us to do it to our own standard- which made the process much more enjoyable. It was then that I really began to enjoy annotating. Before, I would read mostly for comprehension, leaving little room for deeper though about what I would read. That all changed when I began annotating for fun, rather than for a grade. Stories really opened up for me then. I noticed themes, symbols, and smaller details that I hadn't before. 

    As for my process, I prefer to annotate with a pencil on the text itself. I have always been a physical book kind of person; digital books just don't have the same comforting feeling to them. The pandemic did mean that a lot of school reading was online, however. I got pretty good at using Kami, a digital annotation software, to do my reading for texts that weren't available physically. That may have been another reason I didn't like annotating for the longest time. Kami was okay, but I much prefer the satisfaction of physically marking the text as I analyze it. 

Comments

  1. CassiSeptember 22, 2022 at 8:43 AM

    Hi Jalen! I totally agree that physical texts are so much nicer to read and annotate than digital ones. Digital annotating still isn't fun for me and doesn't give me that "satisfaction" you were talking about.... maybe I should look into the software you were talking about! Thanks for sharing that!

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  2. Eloise DanielloSeptember 25, 2022 at 2:24 PM

    Hey Jalen! I like annotating in physical books way better than digital ones. The bookstore is closed today which is a bummer because I really wanted to start reading in the physical book. Also, I totally agree with the fact that annotating according to a certain teachers' rules is extremely annoying and less helpful than doing it to my own standard.

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  3. Paulos HabtewoldSeptember 27, 2022 at 7:13 PM

    Annotating in middle and the beginning of high school really did suck. I used to love reading when I was in elementary school but forced annotating really made me forget why I loved books as you said. I'm starting to read more and more, and annotating can even help me enjoy the book more(sometimes).

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  4. Andrew BautistaSeptember 29, 2022 at 12:22 AM

    I can fully understand the mixed feelings on annotating. I find it to be really tedious when making notes for the sole purpose of the teacher's viewing, but I love it when I can look back on my annotations and see that I've really engaged the text.

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  5. AnonymousOctober 2, 2022 at 10:05 PM

    I totally relate to the initial frustration with annotating, especially because of how tedious it made the act of reading for me. I also found that over time I grew to appreciate them more. I think our learning changed from the specific guidelines and quotas that you mentioned to a more open ended process that demanded deeper insight into the books, making annotations and those small details more of a necessity.

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