I’m finally done! (phew)
Source: Giphy
Now its time for my reflection. Having never done an annotated bibliography, I didn’t really know what to expect. If I’m being honest, I thought it was going to be easy. Easy enough for me to brush it off and save it for the last minute. I don’t know what motivated me to start as early as I did, but I’m glad that I did. Because holy smokes was this hard.
With the time it took to read each 25+ page article, find viable sources, wait for the library to get the physical journals I couldn’t access online, reflect, and do each individual wright-up, I could only do about 2 sources each night before I would burn out. If I had waited until the last few days before it was due, I would have NEVER gotten it in on time.
While the whole process was a bit arduous and time consuming, I can’t complain. Using all of my past research processes as a point of contrast, I can say with complete confidence that: by writing the annotated bibliography, I understand the information I researched now than I have ever in the past. By saving time to think, reflect, and write about the rhetorical devices used, as well as how each source “converses” with one another, I was able to view each source in several different angles. In turn, I received more direct and indirect information through these articles than I would’ve if I had just read them and thrown them into a paper.
Ultimately, the annotated bibliography may just be the most important thing I learned in CTW II this quarter. And while I can’t really see myself writing up a full blown annotated bib for every research paper I will ever have to do in college, that doesn’t mean I will never use it. Instead, I can see myself using a similar, yet shortened format on paper to accompany my outlines and help me to see any further connections between sources.
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