While this seems quite obvious, I always have to remind myself to read through the entirety of the sources before I begin analyzing them and marking them up. I’ve found that when I juggle the tasks of taking extensive notes and reading material for the first time, I often lose focus and track of what I’m doing. This ends up becoming more time-consuming which is why I believe it's important to just read it through first. Instead of writing notes full-out, I like to keep a Post-it note and pen beside me to write down keywords and pages so that I can re-reference them more easily in the future. The Post-it on the left shows some of the small notes I made while my first read through of “Who Is Cuba? Dispersed Protagonism and Heteroglossia in Soy Cuba/I Am Cuba” by Amit Thakkar.

Though it’s an easy thing to look past, choosing the right tools for annotating is important as it can enhance your organization and comprehension to effectively utilize the information from your source. Since getting my iPad, my preferred application for annotating has been GoodNotes. A few reasons why:

• User-friendly

• Integrates with Apple Pencils

• Quickly locates specific annotations and keywords in the document

• Offers a wide variety of annotation tools (i.e. drawing, highlighting, shape recognition, etc.)

Other annotation tools that I’d recommend are Kami or the good ol’ printed paper and pen.

While annotating can be a bit tedious for longer sources such as Thakkar's “Who Is Cuba? Dispersed Protagonism and Heteroglossia in Soy Cuba/I Am Cuba”, I find that using a variety of colors helps keep me engaged in the process as I believe there is more creativity and artistry involved. Another reason why I prefer using so many bright, different colors is because it helps me locate my annotations quicker compared to using darker colors, like black, as they often tend to blend in with the source’s text. Below are the different annotation types I typically use. Tap on each to learn more about them.

As I move towards more advanced writing in my academic career, my need and appreciation for annotations have grown as it is a crucial step to fully understanding not only secondary but other types of sources as well. While everyone has their own solution to active reading, it is still beneficial to know about someone else's approach to the problem. Though I don’t replicate someone’s entire process, I often find useful techniques within and end up applying them to my own practice. My annotation process continues to change as I learn and adapt to new techniques. I think it’ll be exciting to look back at my digital archive one day in the future and see what has changed in my process of active reading.