I was sitting at my desk, holding up my copy of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. I flipped through the pages of the assigned reading as my Brit Lit teacher looked skeptically at the book. "I'm looking for 2-3 annotations per page. Half-credit for today," my teacher said said as he walked away. I tried to keep my face level but I felt the blood rush to my face as I sat there. I had spent an hour on that reading, and I felt like I had actually made some good notes with regards to the upcoming essay.
This was largely my experience in high school. The teachers cared far more about how much was written on the page than the actually content of this writing. So over the course of high school, I hated annotation. On the occasion I was reading a book I enjoyed, every scribble pulled me out of the text and back into the reality that this was an assignment, not the pastime I adored. More frequently, the reading assignment that was already a drag felt like pulling teeth, and a quick assignment became a painstaking process of finding the most minuscule details on each page.
For all the pain it caused me, I recognize the importance of annotation. It saved me time when I was starting my essays, as I already had thoughts and evidence about themes I saw in the text. As I read, I was looking for different themes, even though I didn't enjoy the reading process as much. Maybe it's just human nature to dread the short-term struggle over the long-term benefit. Either way, all of my experiences have lead me to the conclusion that annotation is a necessary evil
This is a somewhat tragic story about a teacher valuing quantity over quality. It's important to develop an annotation strategy that works for you. Not every page will have annotations, but you should eventually get better at noticing things in the text that you might otherwise glance over. That's really the main point of annotating!
ReplyDeleteI liked reading your description about how annotating makes you feel. I definitely can relate. I think of annotating as training your eye; I'm hoping eventually it will become natural and feel effortless.
ReplyDeleteYour story from high school really resonated with me; I've also had multiple experiences where I felt that annotating turned reading into an assignment. However, I agree that annotating definitely helps while writing essays. Something you could try is keeping your annotations as compact as possible to maintain the flow of reading.
ReplyDeleteThe more I read everyone's blog posts about annotating, the more certain I am that most high schoolers have the mutual experience of being forced to annotate for the sake of grades rather than out of sheer curiosity and engagement with the text. In high school I absolutely made random notes in my books for the sake of presentation despite having spent an hour or two hunched over the book the night before diligently immersed in the book.
ReplyDeleteI also had a good chuckle at your title!