In the first five chapters of Nervous Conditions, reading was my main focus. I spent most of the time outside of class reading, and the time in class working on projects. I don't think that this was altogether a bad idea, but there are ways to improve my strategy. First, since I am doing reading guides again, I should probably get those out of the way as I read the chapters. Second, I should use my annotations to help with the reading guides: I write questions in the book, but often end up coming up with new ones for the reading guides.
The most helpful project so far has been annotations. They help me to get my thoughts in order as I'm reading. I think the least helpful was the close reading I did of page 23. I don't think this was because I chose an insignificant passage. I noticed a lot that I would not have before, but in basic comprehension it was not that helpful. It could, looking back however, come in handy when I look towards writing the literary analysis in the A layer.
Strong reflection and evaluation, Mary Beth. Yes, make sure your projects are working for one another - questions you think of as you annotate should become part of your reading guides, and your close reading should support the analysis work you do later. As you move into the second C layer, think about ways to cut down the time you are spending outside of class on this project. While I always appreciate your thoroughness, I don't want you to overwork or be overwhelmed by this project: keep that 2.5 hours/week as a rough estimate of where you should be in terms of out of class reading and project work.
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