My way of annotating and marking up reading given to us in class tends to be very chaotic but organized enough to where I know what I’m reading. I don’t use specific colors or have a structured way of highlighting or underlining or circling. I don’t plan ahead on what I’m looking for (not till later at lease). I will, however, tend to do the same things for each paper I tackle. Even with different prompts, my starting stages are nearly identical.

I start by first going through and highlighting everything I think stands out or hits home. This could be interesting diction, a powerful quote, or even parts that I don’t agree with or understand. If I want to highlight an entire paragraph, I’ll simply put a bracket around it then come back later with a pen and go further into why I liked that entire section. After everything is highlighted, I’ll come back with a blue pen (this is the only thing I will consistently do) and write down notes as to why I highlighted something. This ends up being comments or questions or summaries of bits and pieces. Once this is done, I will go then and look at the prompt. Depending on what the prompt is looking for, I will go back into the text and use a different colored pen and whatever I had originally highlighted and written about is filtered through and marked if it works. If I think something is vital to my stance on the plot, I’ll usually circle or star it.

In the end, I’ll usually have everything I need and more. If I don’t think I have enough quotes I tend to just skim back through and pick out some ideas the author had that I maybe hadn’t caught in the beginning. 

In a way, my process is almost a way of me summarizing the big idea of the papers. It allows me to be able to look past the filler words and recognize the potential of the work. By bolding parts of the papers, I’m able to start asking more on track questions instead of getting distracted by something minor in the author’s conversation. I can actually go and find my stance in all of it when I have the pieces laid out in front of me. A lot of the times the things I do recognize prompt me to try to figure out how they fit in the whole grand scheme of things and hopefully then help me be able to write with good supporting evidence. 

references:

journal #20

For this journal, I ended up deciding to talk about Jake and Jess’s. Reading how we all tend to agree on the fact that the situation then and now is a stressful and scary time is nice to know. It means we aren’t alone in this. I agree with both of them when they talk about how first responders are risking it all and making huge sacrifices working with the sick. It takes a lot in a person to be able to put aside the risk for someone else they don’t even know. We all tend to hope we would have the courage to help others in times of crisis and to know that there are people out there that will step up to the task when needed. It makes me happy to know that while there are these risks that people my age are going and making efforts to help their communities. It’s cool to see the different ways we’re doing it as well. I liked how Jake talked about how he’s seeing this as an opportunity to repay a community that helped him throughout high school. I also liked how Jess is working with the fire department, a group of people who aren’t really at the forefront of the pandemic relief efforts. I don’t know what it’s like living in a state surrounding the epicenter for the US, but I find it almost inspiring to see people that I know from class going and, despite the fear going around, helping those around them. We need more people like this in times where everything seems so dark and gloomy to give back some hope.

journal #22

I’m more just questioning how they even knew to do the things they did. They had some weird ways of keeping themselves well, and I found it interesting. It seems the family had past knowledge of keeping illness at bay. The killing of the cat, as bad as the image is, makes sense if the disease was carried by the flies. Was it carried by flies? I don’t think it was. I think the isolation kept them from not getting sick. The other things might have helped with immune-boosting. Is this all based on wives’ tales? I feel like the whole thing was kinda drastic, but at the same time, it worked.
The images that stand out the most are the cutting of hair to the scalp, the cutting of a cat’s throat, and the bloody X on the door. The flies also just made my skin crawl. It’s all so unsettling to think of these things. It makes me feel gross.
The parallels in this to what we’re going through now with COVID-19 are how they isolated themselves from everyone. They sang to entertain themselves while being locked up. They also were trying to find ways to combat a disease that had no cure like how coronavirus has no cure. We use masks and medicines to try to fix it. My family takes immune system boosters like elderberry to try to keep ourselves from being susceptible.

journal #24

I think a huge point to focus on in her journal is how we were foolish to think this virus would never make it to America. We were completely underprepared to handle this virus despite us having since January to start putting measures into place. We know China is one of the biggest trade partners with America and we know that there’s constantly a large number of travelers coming from China into the U.S. It was dumb to think we were immune to this. I think too we polarize ourselves and make things political that we shouldn’t which puts us here in situations like we’re in now. I agree that change the size we implemented is nearly impossible to do overnight, but I still think it took way too long to actually put the changes into effect. Even now we’re starting to wonder if COVID had been in the US way back in January February.