Learning Outcome #3: Employ techniques of active reading, critical reading, and informal
reading response for inquiry, learning, and thinking

Learning Outcome Reflection:

While annotating the articles we’ve gone over in class I tend to use a couple of different strategies to help myself understand the overarching theme. For starters, I did handwritten annotations and felt that it was easier for me to understand the text when physically writing down my thoughts. I also incorporated questions throughout the article that I may have been confused or not understood to come back to. If I was confused about why a certain event occurred, I tended to ask why they made that certain decision. I also used this method with words I wasn’t familiar with. Putting a question or just a question mark reminded me to do further research on the meaning of that particular word or phrase. Without doing this I would’ve been confused with certain topics and wouldn’t have fully understood the meaning behind the article. Frequently I resort to summarizing the paragraph’s key details or important definitions that will be referenced later in the article. I saw myself doing this strategy a lot in “The Coddling Of The American Mind.” The authors were expressing social issues, for example, “trigger warnings” and how they affected Gen Z in classroom settings. Summarizing and adding definitions to these keywords helped me understand the overall message of the article more clearly. For this semester all of our articles were connected by social media and its toll on our generation. Although they expressed different issues, it was easy to find similarities between the articles, especially as the semester progressed. Since most of our articles were opinionated it was important to understand the ideas expressed. Some were more challenging than others but helped highlight the author’s ideas. Without annotating the texts it would have been difficult to understand the author’s position on the specific topic. As mentioned before, the texts were opinionated which made the rhetorical strategies that much more important. Having concrete examples and evidence of their argument made the article more credible. Once again “The Coddling Of The American Mind” did an excellent job backing up their argument with credible evidence. Without fully understanding the text through annotations it would be difficult to see how well their examples worked with the theme.

Social Media & Friendships Discussion Board:

1. Maria Konnikova’s essay “The Limits of Friendship” explains the Dumbar number and how it correlates to social media followers and relationships. This system groups your followers, acquaintances, friends, and close friends or family that make up your social network. The difference with these relationships is that the ones we make on social media are superficial compared to the ones we make face-to-face. She explained how “things that keep face-to-face friendships strong is the nature of shared experience: you laugh together; you dance together; you gape at the hot dog at the Coney Island together” ( Konnikova ). Without those memories and emotions that you feel with that person, it isn’t easy to maintain a meaningful relationship. Spending enough time with friends to make long-lasting relationships is crucial. Even though you can show some of your personality through social media by, “ sharing, liking, knowing that all of your friends have looked at the same cat video on Youtube as you did” it is not the same as the in-person memories you will make with real friends ( Konnikova ). She used the example of Christmas cards that perfectly showed the use of the Dumbar system. When a family sends out Christmas cards, “people fall into circles of relative closeness-family, friends, neighbors, and work colleagues ( Konnikova ). This system allows us to reflect on our actual relationships compared to social media relationships.

2. My closest friends have been in my life since childhood. Though I was young these relationships have lasted longer than anything through social media. Even though social media has helped me connect with people, most aren’t long-term relationships. Although without Instagram I never would’ve met my current roommate. We get along great and have started to make those memories through shared experiences. Unless you make the effort to get to know someone when talking on apps like Snapchat or Instagram those relationships aren’t going to last like in-person ones. 

Evidence of Mastery:

“The Coddling Of The American Mind,” By Greg Lukanoff and Jonathan Haidt annotations.

“Small Change”, By Malcolm Gladwell annotations.

“The Limits Of Friendship”, By Maria Konnikova