Through the course I have been able to better understand and develop my annotating skills. I never really incorporated annotations into my readings, and even when I did I was only doing some highlighting or some little comments. I feel I am a lot more confident now and have a better understanding of the things I need to annotate as well as the comments I can say on them to have them help me understand the readings and setting up my essay. One annotating approach that I have used to help me is relating parts of readings to my own life experience. For example in the source “Women are Calling Out Medical Gaslighting” by Melinda MoyerI made a connection to the quote “She felt as that the doctors were telling her that her excruciating pain was just “something that a woman needs to live through”. I was able to relate this annotation to a similar story about my mom, who had seen many doctors for some very bad shoulder pain, but felt like none of them cared. I ended up using this in my essay and felt it was a strong point. When deciding what to mark, I tried to just pick out the things that made the most sense to me and the best point I could use to build on and connect to. One thing I didn’t do a lot was ask questions through annotations. I am not yet fully comfortable with asking questions. To me it feels a little bit awkward but I do understand the good effect it has to open up the readings. I enjoyed a lot of reading we did in this course so it was never a huge hassle to annotate. On some of the longer readings I definitely could’ve done a better job at fully annotating throughout. I have grown to be a more active reader, allowing me to better annotate and understand readings and be more equipped to incorporate these readings into my essays.
