3 Active Reading – Employ techniques of active reading, critical reading, and informal reading response for inquiry, learning, and thinking.
I like to take notes when I read just about anything. I usually write down what I’m thinking while I’m reading and go back later to assess the thoughts and see how they relate to each other and the other readings. While I don’t always mark my paper with the specific annotation that I’m doing, I see how the Brief Guide to Annotations helps a reader find different ways to connect with a text that aren’t just agreeing with the author. It involves challenging, connecting, questioning, and understanding.
Annotations from Ross Gay’s “Inciting Joy”
Here my highlight is on the quote about how joy and sorrow are intertwined. I made both understanding and extending annotations for this section because this quote really sparked a lot of ideas in my head, and I knew instantly that this would be something I would mention in my essay. I reference sorrow and joy, and the importance of relationships.
Reading Response to Ross Gay’s “Inciting Joy”
Here is my initial thoughts to this question, which was similar to my annotations from the previous work sample. I talked about how joy and sorrow interact with each other and that they are both required to feel one another. I talked about having a day-in day-out mentality, which is in reference to DFW. I also write about how this mindset has impacted my mental health.
Body paragraph from essay #3 with quote from Ross Gay
In this example, you can see how my thoughts moving from being written in the margins to being written within the essay. Here I quote Gay and explain how humans need both joy and sorrow in order to feel one. I also mention the importance of relationships when going through sorrow because through these connections is where we can find joy.
Body paragraph from essay #3
In this paragraph I bring back the mental health talk about how I have dealt with sorrow and how I feel now that I am in touch with my emotions better. I talked about how just focusing on the right things brought me closer to joy and happiness because instead of focusing on everything wrong with my life, I started to appreciate and think about what is good and makes me happy. I conclude with that fact that I needed to feel constant stress and sorrow so that now finding what makes me happy is clear.
