From the start of the semester to now, I have come a long way in how I annotate the articles that I’ve been reading for this class. Earlier in the semester, I read and annotated “The Moral Bucket list” by David Brooks. Throughout this article, I made lots of annotations but they were mostly small and not as detailed. Many of the comments that I made were connections. These connections would be considered drawing relationships on the categories for active critical reading chart. These connections were based off of myself and also to my surroundings. For example, on page one in “The Moral Bucket List,” I made a connection to “But our culture and our educational systems spend more time teaching the skills and strategies you need for career success than the qualities you need to radiate that sort of inner light.” My connection was to my own life, I said that this is true, because in high school our system was you learn the information they teach you just to be tested on. We aren’t learning to gain knowledge or a deep understanding, it really only feels like you just need to know it for a test and that’s it. The article I’m reading now, “In China, Human Costs Are Built Into an iPad” by Charles Duhigg and David Barboza, I made lots of more comments based off of categories for active reading than I did in the previous article. Many of the comments I made were understanding or rewording something I had highlighted. This helps me, because when I look back at the article instead of having to read the whole thing I can read a lot of my annotations and get a general idea about what that passage was about. For example, on page three, “executives want to improve conditions within factories, but that dedication falters when it conflicts with crucial supplier relationships or the fast delivery of new products.” My annotation was, so Apple wants to improve the working conditions in their factories but if they do so then the rate they receive their delivery products would suffer and they can’t have that when they want their deliveries to be fast. In this recent article, I feel my work as an active reader has made lots of improvements, because of the types of annotations I’m making to support my thoughts as I read.

Below are examples of some of my current annotations in, “In China, Human Costs Are Built Into an iPad” and next to those are pictures of examples of my past annotations from “The Moral Bucket List.”