What is a reading log I asked myself when Tracy first presented this assignment… a simple journal that I write in after each class? Oh no… this was sometimes twenty pages of reading journal articles and then comparing their arguments and reflections. You can only imagine how I felt about this in the beginning, but to my surprise this crazy assignment opened my eyes to many things I would have never considered. It made me wonder and question things; allowing me to interpret other peoples experiences and discern its validity. It made me realize that there is a lot of history I did not know existed– such as the Chilcotin War.
Although reading logs were a lot of work; once I forced myself to read through each article it was always rewarding. I became interested and passionate about topics I had never even heard of– like the Fille Du Rois, and realized that I knew very little about Indigenous history. By doing the reading logs I did not simply learn about the past I gained knowledge and materials to help me succeed in other classes as well.
By the end of the semester I had the knowledge to decipher worth while and irrelevant information, so when I sometimes had a novel and four articles to read in a week I was able to use this new tool so my time was used efficiently.