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AboutReadingJournals

About Reading Journals

One classmate wanted to know "what types of notes you're looking for in our Reading Journals. Would you like our opinion on what we read or general notes from the reading?"

A little bit of both. They should work to highlight major points from the reading, but they also need to link those major points with your own experience. Without linking what is in the reading to your own lives, the reading doesn't get connected to who you are or who you want to be--it won't stick beyond this class, and that's a waste of your time.

Here's how I responded to the "opinion" question in the e-mail:

First, think of the notes as showing you really did *read* -- not just glance over. So have something written for at least each page.

Second, opinions, presented on their own, are not particularly useful. "I think red is an ugly color," for example. Now, if I happened share a particular experience of mine, that explained why red always has a difficult connotation for me, then at least people can see I think about things, not just express my own views as though everyone should think the way I do.

Now everything we write is, in the end, sort of our own opinions. It is a particular person speaking, and so a particular person's point of view-- his or her opinion. But what you should do is make a connection between some concept or point of view in the reading, and some particular experience or point of view of your own.

Connecting, you see, will be one of the big challenges we'll be working on all through the course. And the more specialized or "technical" something is, the more it seems like one needs to be an "expert" to talk about it, the more reluctant people are to do the connecting, but the more important the connecting becomes.

So, as you're reading, think about what strikes you as new or different from how you saw things before, and explain the comparison--that's doing the job of connecting. Even if something strikes you as normal, it might not be to others, and so explaining how the book's point matches your own experience could be useful to classmates.

We'll be doing some discussing of the reading in class, as well.