When revisiting my first reading response to “The Hawk,” I immediately saw places where I could’ve dove deeper to strengthen my connections. The question asked which themes and ideas resonated most with you from the story. I gave a lengthy response but the highlighted lines signal where I would now critique and add more specific “I say.” 

First Reading Response Paragraph to “The Hawk”

When I talked about my respect for the Hawk taking time for himself by camping out at the football field, I could’ve added how I’ve been through my own mental health struggles. Taking the time to step back and ground myself, whether that be through hockey or hiking, has been extremely beneficial for me and I can value and understand the Hawk’s reasoning behind returning to the football field. That is his home and place of comfort, as the ice rink and White Mountains can be for myself. As I was reviewing this first reading response, I noticed these highlighted places where I could’ve gone deeper and given a better explanation of why these themes resonated with me. This shows my improvement in incorporating the I say component and I’ve been much more confident in doing so lately. Making these text to text connections has become a more natural part of my annotating and writing in my recent reading responses. 

Strong annotations, including text to text connections, helped me respond to reading questions that further helped me craft my final essays. When annotating in high school, I mostly only made understanding marks to define a word, jotted down questions, made shallow connections, or highlighted important phrases. Over the semester, I have been able to challenge the author or extend on their ideas while observing their rhetorical choices through these new annotation strategies. Many notes fill the margins of my class handouts in a somewhat organized way, thanks to the symbols we’ve used. The attached image shows my continuation of leaving notes to help my understanding when flipping back through Bloom’s essay, “Is Empathy Overrated?” while I also make a deep text to self connection. When my brother passed away, people sent hundreds and hundreds of flowers to us as an act of empathy, but like the town of Newton, the money spent could’ve been put towards those who actually needed it. I also acknowledge Bloom’s effectiveness with the Newton massacre example, where he builds up his argument on empathy’s dangers through this paragraph and the two previous ones.  

Understanding, Exploring Relationships, & Rhetorical Annotations from “Is Empathy Overrated?”

The text to text connection I made in Bloom’s essay carried into my reading response, which then arguably became my most valuable personal example in my empathy essay. 
My ability to challenge an author through annotations is shown in this image where I push back on Bloom’s claim that empathy impacts us in the same way that prejudice does. This sharply contrasts with my own beliefs, which I noted. I also observed Bloom’s clever rhetorical move to welcome his audience with a gentler first paragraph before dropping this controversial view. 

Challenging & Rhetorical Annotations from “Is Empathy Overrated?”

These annotation strategies have helped me gain a deeper understanding of the source material while encouraging myself to think more critically and push back on an author’s ideas. In the end, many of my annotations and reading response topics are expanded on throughout my essays.