In responding to readings, I try to interact with the text as much as possible. In the pdf provided, the article titled Can Planet Earth Feed 10 Billion People? By Charles C. Mann is annotated by my thoughts and ideas. In general, I find ideas that stand out to me or points that I think are essential to the paper as a whole. I try to keep it simple (because if I use colors, they tend to distract me or I use too many and the whole thing just looks disorganized). When I find points that I want to accentuate, I go back and try to reword the author’s thoughts in my own words. This helps me reorganize what I want to say in response to paper and how I want to say it. In addition to finding key points in the paper I annotate, I also like to highlight words that particularly interest me. Most of the time, these words are similes or metaphors that I describe the author’s thoughts that I want to reference back to. After finding choice words and important ideas, I like to input my own thoughts that relate to the paper. This can include facts that I have learned from other classes or other sources. This will start my brainstorm for what I want to say and how I want to say it. My styles of annotation show how I can extract the author’s overall message in the overall paper.
