annotating 101

POV - the stressed student

So what's the dealio? Oh, you have nine separate thirty page-long pdfs to read in the next five hours? And you actually need to understand them all well enough to write a whole paper? Ain't humcore a b-... a beautiful class? Here, don't worry. Relax, take a deep breath, and let's figure this out together.

For reference, this page touches on how I personally read scholarly articles, like Matthew Restall's Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest. I'll be dishing a few of my annotation and note-taking tips and I hope they may be of some help in your future academic reading pursuits!

first reads & mark-ups

Restall, Matthew. Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest. Oxford University Press, 2021.

First reads are about understanding. Basic comprehension and striving to extract the essence of the author's message. Restall's excerpt was sweet in that, while it dealt with incredibly pressing content and complex claims, the way in which he presented it was relatively straightforward and comprehensible. Something I appreciated about his work in particular was how it was structured; he raised up different myths in an organized and chronological fashion and then followed them up with the counter-explanation.

The real challenge, then, is to tackle the sheer size of the pdf. This means recognizing the larger claim of a particular section and distinguishing it from the evidence with which the author uses as support. Typically I will jot down notes as I read but I strive to keep it organized, making larger categories and subsequent sub-categories with the evidence the author uses as additional bullet points.

It helps especially on the first read to mark up a document with the major claims; on this page in particular, the larger idea was that the Spanish deemed communication skills, and literacy and verbal fluency especially, as hallmarks of civilization. This ideology led to the subsequent erroneous conclusion that since the Incans had no apparent communication system that involved reading and writing, that they were uncivilized. While Restall pinpoints the myth that civilization = communication, the page also relates to the larger theme of the cyclicity of eurocentric logic that bases their superiority on their culture and their culture on their supposed superiority. So while "civility of literacy" is in itself one of the book's claims, it also serves as supportive evidence of the fallacy of colonial rationale.

the power of personalized notes

notebook zoho

When my friend first introduced me to notebook zoho, I was skeptical about it. But the multi-notebook format of it and the fun colors you can choose from quickly made me fall in love with the annotating and note-taking style.

Think of notebook zoho as an online multiverse of notebooks. You can divide up all your notes into new notebooks - for respective classes and whatever else you want to categorize. And it's all paperless! To the left are all the notes I have thus far for this quarter of humcore. I think it really is beneficial to take hand-written notes at some points; there's likely some truth that putting pen to paper is more advantageous to committing content to memory. But for classes which require a great deal of writing and encompass a lot of information, I've found it more helpful to use a digital format (typing is a lot faster).

And for something that is both as long and complex and deserving of in-depth analysis as the excerpt from Matthew Restall's book, Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest, my online notebook came especially in handy. But what I've found is that there are a couple of crucial differences between passive and active note-taking.

passive versus active notetaking

To me, passive notetaking means absentmindedly and almost robotically jotting down whatever you hear a professor to say. It's the equivalent to memorizing a formula without understanding its derivation (how you got there) or what it even means. It's not useful. Knowledge and rote memorization without understanding is often pointless, and it's certainly not the purpose of a class as introspective and analytical as humcore.

Active notetaking, in comparison, involves actively engaging with the information, extracting the author's message while imbuing your notes with your own analysis. It involves paraphrasing and selective usage of the author's key words as opposed to transferring directly from their work to yours. The purpose of notes, after all, is so that you yourself understand it. Anyone can copy and paste. It also involves additional research as it is necessary. Delving into complex historical concepts can be confusing, especially if you're diving head-first into it, so contextualization is everything. Defining unknown words and unfamiliar terms is crucial. How can you understand a topic if you don't know the associated terms that surround it?

Pictured below is the first half of my notes on Restall's article (for the full note, click on it). It strives to establish order, categorizing the different myths and counter-explanations that he offers. It then offers sub-points that include examples of the misconceptions which Restall is working to debunk and looks into various cultural practices with which I was previously unfamiliar with. You might notice me paraphrasing what Restall is saying and then a bullet point afterwards which clothes the complexity of his words with the simplicity of my understanding (i.e. dumbing down the notes so I can understand then in my own "vernacular").

first part of my notes for Restall's excerpt; ignore the typos and run-on sentences - that's just enthusiastic learning at work.

tips & tricks

subjectify it!

I've found that responding to complex high-class literature with my own voice is beneficial both to my own understanding of the work and the level of enjoyment and enthusiasm with which I can approach it. My goal in every class is to embrace educational content as directly relational to myself and my own experiences; that's how I best engage with information - by identifying how it can apply to me. My big "strategy" is to entertain myself as I take notes. I make jokes that I know will stupidly make me laugh when I read them later and encourage me to keep on going.

the big idea box

When I finish taking notes for a too-long article or lecture, I find it supremely useful to skim everything I had just written and put it in a big box. Like a literal box as you can see in my Restall notes above. This allows me to encapsulate the main points and use for later when I'm trying to recall the big idea of a particular work. This is especially helpful when you're trying to forge connections between seemingly unrelated works because big-idea boxes zoom out of the specifics and allow you to evaluate individual works holistically.

supplemental research

If I'm not googling something every two seconds, am I really studying? I won't lie; I typically don't understand much on a first read. But taking the time to do little bits of research on this and that concept help greatly in the long run; they both prop up and bolster your overall understanding of the topic, contributing to that much needed support of contextualization. And I am so not above using wikipedia for help. Because, after all, how can you understand something you don't know?

mark it up

Although the notetaking format I've discussed so far is purely digital, you can really highlight anything you put your mind to. If you can get access to a pdf editor, I highly recommend it. Adding a pop of color to important excerpts or sections of that 60 page article that you didn't fully get are great for later reference, especially when it comes to collecting evidence for essays. Add notes in the margins to explain why something is important, so you can save yourself even more time! If anything, it's always fun to play with color, as you can tell from my rainbow of different notecards.

change the mode

I can 100% attest to the fact that I will inevitably zone out during the first 15 minutes of a depressingly long pdf reading. But sometimes you just have to switch up your learning style. There's so many different ways to engage with educational material and tapping into different learning styles, whether they be visual or auditory or even kinesthetic, will all target your neural pathways in new and refreshing ways. So "take a break" by listening to a podcast, or watching a related film, or a helpful explanatory YouTube video; you'll find yourself both enjoying and benefiting from this multimodal learning method.

make analogies

This kind of falls within the umbrella of subjectifying and personalizing your notes, but I still think analogies are such a superb way of relating unfamiliar concepts to yourself. Being able to apply the perspective of major historical figures by connecting them to your own allows you a lens into their motives and behaviors. Asides from yourself, it can be incredibly beneficial to make analogies to other related or even unrelated works. I've found myself connecting themes from different humcore units with this technique, and that helps me see the greater themes of the quarter, such as the normalization of social norms and the subjectivity of reality.

understanding versus memorization

This video will take you through the differences between knowing the name of something and actually knowing something. It's interesting to introspect and identify when we're just trying to shovel information into our brains monotonously and when we're genuinely engaging with the material - and which learning experience is superior to the other.

Let me know which character you resonate with most in the form to the left!

works cited:
Restall, Matthew. Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest. Oxford University Press, 2021.

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