Revisiting my responses from “The Hawk” by Brian Doyle and “Joy” by Zadie Smith, I was disappointed and pleased with myself. Why both? You might ask. Well I am disappointed in the way I used to answer questions, clearly lacking specificity. I would answer the questions with a summary rather than analyzing the questions and using my own voice. However, I am pleased with how far I have come since then. More recently, my answers in response to “Joy” offer more detail and analysis of the piece. Answering the questions with my own voice and quotes from the source, rather than a brief summary. During the first essay it was difficult to gather my ideas to support my argument, but by writing in more detail and using critical thinking in my responses I was able to transfer over some of my ideas easier during the second essay. Not only have I noticed a difference in my responses but I have developed my annotation skills tremendously. Annotation being a key difference in my writing process between essay one and two. When I first began with Becoming a Writer, I would circle or write in the margin when I noticed something, causing my annotations to not be scattered all over the place. Now, after learning about different annotation styles such as understanding, rhetorical, questioning, and exploring relationships, I am able to think more critically about what I am reading. Using those annotation styles allows me as a reader to bookmark key information for reading responses and contribute more to class discussions.

Annotation 1: Uses both Text-to-World and Text-to-Text annotations to explore relationships. The text-to-world annotation is used when I recognized how a child brings joy to many families in our world. The text-to-text is used when I noticed a similarity to Brian Doyles idea of “building up a brick wall”. Uses questioning annotation to bring up in class: How the paragraph leads to joy?
Annotation 2: Uses both Understanding and Text-to-Self annotations. I used the understanding annotation because I understood Zadie Smith’s example’s of pleasure that can be misconceived as joy. The text-to-self annotation was used because I can relate to the misconception of joy as an accomplishment or acquisition.
Early semester response answer to the “Hawk” offers very little analysis and lacks specifics.
Late semester response answer to “Joy”. I use a Barclay paragraph as well as specifics to answer the question thoroughly.