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Does anyone really know how?
There is a general point in time when you are expected to know how to make annotations. As an AP kid in high school, it was expected of me, but even with many teachers showing me examples of excellent annotations I never really understood them. I could obviously read and see the color systems used, the comments, definitions, but there would always be a lot.
I thought I was doing something wrong if my annotations weren't full of notes and comments and in turn, I would try to add random comments for the sake of making it look as full as those excellent annotations.
I still don’t consider myself the best at annotations, but I do have my own way of doing them in a way that works out best for me. I am here to be an example to those who may not see their own annotations as the ones shown to future students as amazing annotations. To show and tell those who don't have a definitive style that it's fine.
Step one: Read
Pretty basic, but the only thing I have kept consistent and stuck is to read the whole passage first without annotating. To some, this may seem like a waste of time and if you can read it for the first time and annotate it the first read then good for you, but sometimes I just read a sentence over and over again until it makes sense. This is why you should always read first, being an Ap kid my teachers would constantly remind us that we are on a timer and that everything matters, but the timer isn't here anymore and we are allowed to take in the time to truly take in what we are reading. This also allows me to set up for the next step
Step two: Color time(fun)
This step varies depending on the text in which, after I get a feel for the overall mood and tone I go over the text and highlight words or phrases that I feel connect to the color.
Red is for negative words and negative in the context of the text, green is for positive or motivating words, blue is for emotions or appealing to emotions, and pink is for words I don't know well
In the case of Cooks’ chapter “Intricate Illusion,” I felt the text to be more informative and revealing, so I picked up the tone to be overall negative, but uplifting to those she wants to shine a light on.
Step three: Ideas
At this point in time if I have a question or prompt I need to answer then I would reread that and look back at my main ideas to help answer them. I have underlined things I see as important even though I might not use them as a main argument, but rather a sub-argument. Those highlighted in purple are the main ideas of each paragraph and overall stay the same through out the text This is mainly to answer questions such as what is the purpose of this text? And Who is the audience ment to be?
Analysis
For a text whose main purpose is to reveal the truth, I see the audience for this scholarly work to be the public as a whole due to how this affects a range of things. Take into consideration the whole idea of Titus Kaphar’s work, he is an artist who wants to shed light on those who have been mistreated, dehumanized, and wrongfully represented in the past, but he does so not by erasing history. Rather by removing white men from the spotlight and giving African American men and women the life they were robbed of in the past. Throughout the text, the ideas of recognizing the past, hiding, reconstructing, engaging, and perspective are constantly brought up as a reminder that Titus wants us the viewer to see everything in a new light and analyze what is truly going on behind the scenes.
Cooks does a great job of using such words in her own analysis to show that Titus does the exact same thing to his art, whether it be with sculpture or paintings he makes all of the reconstruction meaningful literally and metaphorically.
Step four: Read again
After all of this color coding and underlining some may have forgotten what they were reading about or what their main goal even was so after doing the annotations I take the time to remind myself what my prompt is and what I just annotated. This is meant to catch any errors or if it flows nicely and is cohesive.
Citations
Kaphar, Titus. Classical Disruption. Friedman Benda
GIF sources
Moonset [Digital Image]. 2021. Retrieved from https://www.reddit.com/r/gifs/comments/jo547b/i_drew_this_pixel_art_scene_using_4_colors_only/?utm_source=ifttt
Bookhorder [Digital Image]. 2018. Retieved from https://ofmidnightravings.wordpress.com/2018/03/08/the-quote-hoarder-what-is-a-bookworm-2/
Flipping [Digital Image]. 2018. Retieved from https://giphy.com/gifs/anime-opening-xkMzLvTrESR68
Images
Kaphar, Titus. Father and Son. 2010
Kaphar, Titus. Preservation of Family Fictions. 2011
Kapher, Titus. Behind the Myth of Benevolence. 2014
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