The annotations we have done of the essays by David Foster Wallace, Michael Pollen, Hal Herzog, and Ross Anderson in this class have helped me a great deal with really understanding what I was reading and helped me to better engage with the text. When annotating I mainly start by reading through for comprehension and any lines that stick out to me as being important I either highlight or underline and any important words that I feel make a difference to what I’m reading I circle. Once I’ve gone through and read it all I go back and make comments on the things I have highlighted (or underlined) whether it’s questioning the author’s reasoning, explaining what’s going on or simply just identifying it’s importance to the text. I show that I am able to “interrogate” readings as Gilroy said by looking for the deeper meaning in the text and figuring out why exactly the author is making those specific claims. For example in the essay Animals Like Us by Hal Herzog, I made some comments like “Morality vs. Logic” and asked guided questions like “What might have had influenced her thought process?” These were helpful to me because when writing my own papers I was able to look back on those notes and really dig deep into what the writer felt was important to include and make connections within my own writing. My class and I have discussed and practiced active critical reading in a few different ways. For instance, in class, while peer editing I have found that the practice of annotation bettered our skills because it taught us to read through text for big-picture ideas. Another way we have practiced active critical reading is in our other classes such as science of any sort where there is more challenging material that is harder to comprehend
