One of the things that the excerpt mentions in having a “thinking-intensive” reading experience. I think that this is how I have adapted to reading the texts we are given in class. The best example of this is the annotations from the first essay where the professor had us read the article and annotate with different colors on two seperate nights. I thought this was an interesting activity because I found myself wanting to write the same things on the paper because I read different parts, they sparked the same ideas as before. I feel like having this type of interaction with the writing helped me retain what I was reading better and allowed me to pull evidence from the text more easily. Before this class, I had also never successfully created an outline for an essay, instead I always ended up word vomiting on the paper and using that as an essay. I think that using an outline has allowed me to be more organized in my writing and has allowed my writing to be more on topic and make much more sense. My favorite way to outline is to write things on a whiteboard in different sections and categories and then make visual connections. This class has also taught me a lot about drafts. In my last two years of high school we would always do timed writes, so there would be no time for drafts, but now that we are given enough time to go back and look at essays I am able to do this. This was a hard adjustment at first, but I have been able to see my writing improve greatly through it. With respect to my annotations, I feel like my main strategy was to write things that I found important on the paper and then use symbols and underlines to draw attention to certain areas. This has been my method for a long time and since it worked for me then, I decided to use it throughout the course and it has been extremely beneficial to me!
