Via SurveyMonkey, all students were asked — on this Monday after the student-submission side of the project has come to an end — to comment on a range of questions.
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Question 6:
Do you feel confident with THE STORY and the ANNOTATIONS/NOTES found in “The Annotated Alice” now that the PROJECT HAS ENDED?
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Here were their (unedited) responses:
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1. For the most part, although a few things confuse me. I say this because I really didn’t like to read the annotations but as I wrote my blogs I started to see similarities in my writtings and the book’s annotations. I was very interesting. I do feel like I should reread the book’s annotations to compare my thoughts with the thoughts of the author of the book.
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2. Nothing really out of the ordinary here. The book was not easy to read, but not the worst I or my peers have ever tried. And, once more, the extreme amount of collaboration that was possible should have eliminated any problems with the book on the spot. Someone within our group is bound to get it, and from there everyone just reads their work and writes their own.
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3. I felt fairly confident about the actual story however, I did have some troble understanding the annotations. It was difficult to read a story that had notes in it that were not mine because they got a bit confusing but, looking back I think they were an great learnig tool. Mon,
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4. I feel that with all great confusing stories, all of the important loose ends were tied up at the end of the story. When we realized Wonderland was just a dream, or so we think, it gave a justification to the entire story. We could then rationalize the story in a way that made sense to us. I think that once I finished the story is when I really was able to come up with great blog ideas. With the story finished you could reflect on things and question them in a way that you couldn’t while reading the story, because you didn’t know how Carroll would solve that situation.
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5. After hearing so much analysis and seeing so many different interpretations, I feel that I know more about Alice than any other storybook.
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6. After reading the story and analyzing it for 6 weeks, I do feel comfortable with the majority of the content of the story. That said, the annotations are very tedious to read through at times, and difficult to remember. It may have helped if we had one optional “discussion day” every week (or every other week) so that people who are just not understanding certain things, or have writer’s block, can get a better understanding of the text and toss some ideas around.
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7. I would say for the most part, but some key points in the story do confuse me. If I were to re-read these parts and study them, then I would fully undertand the story and annotations. I just lack some knowledge on chapters 9 and 11.
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8. For the most part, I feel confident with the story of Alice. Although I still feel like I could have better understanded the story and the annotations.
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9. I honestly do not think there could be ANYTHING ELSE that could be discovered or interpreted from the text. By analyzing Alice for about 6 weeks, I believe we all fully understand the story. If we were to extend the project to more than 6 weeks, we would start to repeat ourselves and become confused from our first interpretation. If you don’t believe we all confident with the story and annotations/notes…READ OUR BLOGS.
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10. Yes, I feel confident about the story and the annotations found in Alice in Wonderland now that the project is over. I believe that I understand the story and the meaning behind it according to the annotations.
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11. Yeah I read it I see what happens. The annotations still bother me though, as I previously stated in my blog entry. Only because they seem obvious and not very useful. It’s almost a waste of time to go and read them. But I’m confident with the story.
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12. Overall everything I discussed on the blog made sense to me. There are part of Alice I still feel is nonsense though, but maybe that’s just how it’s suppose to be. The Mad Hatter was one character I couldn’t really figure out…or maybe I was ust reading too much into his actions. Alice herself is more apparent to me now, it seems Alice can be anything you want her to be, the reader’s story. The annotations helped with unfamiliar terms, but it still seemed quaint to me, perhaps it comes with a difference of cultures. Even though I have analyzed Alice to quite an extent, I am still inclined to regard this as just a children’s story to be enjoyed. However I will not stop seeing Alice refrences everwhere after this project!
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13. Hmmm. Well I feel confidant with them, but I am still confused about the choice of alice. I feel like the only reason it was select was because there were so many “rabbit holes” to be explored. Otherwise I felt like it was a lack-lustre story in terms of the Hero’s Journey, plot structure, etc. For me the story of Alice was kind of like the paintings of mondiron (you know the ones with black lines and squares of red, blue, and yellow). The style is interesting and indefinite (and different), but I didn’t find it necessarily profound, or my style.
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14. I feel like the story itself still confuses me. However, this story was NOTHING like I thought it meant or was. I never realized how much Disney had tweaked it in the movie, and reading the story and annotations makes me a bit creeped out about Carroll himself, and the references. Not just the drugs, or the hookah, but all these little hints of death. Now, do I feel like I’m an expert on the story? No, but I know more than I did before, courtesy of the annotations, and my peers.
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15. I think that the story itself is fairly simple. It’s only once we to begin to dig past the simplistic veneer surface that Alice becomes the confounding story we all now know it to be. I will say that the Annotations served to provide several very interesting blog prompts as well as a good bit of dry humor.
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16. To be honest, I think I will always be confused by the story. It will be one of those things were it is brought up some time later in your life and you think back to tenth grade english. I’m not sure anyone can FULLY understand the story. We may have our own versions of what we think happened or of what is meant. There will always be a part of me that is still trying to figure out the story. Now everytime I hear someone mention Alice In Wonderland, I will think back to tenth grade english and all the questions I had will come flooding back. I guess we just have to live with the fact that we may never umderstand the story the way we would like to.
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17. I can never be confident about a story, because we can never know all there is to know. I read the book tenthousand times over and over, but I still don’t know enough. There are certain scenes that I can’t comprehend no matter whose blogs I read and who I talk to. Some annotations prove to have no beneficial information lying inside them, and therefore confuse me.
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18. As the story progressed, so did my confidence in the annotations and plot. At first, I was a little lost like Alice. Random white rabbits and size changes are just not my thing. Once Alice got out of the hall and the story took off, I was able to have a greater understanding of the events that were happening and the hidden meanings behind them.
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19. I know the story and the annotations well, I just don’t see the point of them. I know when, where, who, and what happened, but not so much on the why.
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20. The Annotations certainly helped with learning all about the story, and after all was said and done, I understood the book.
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21. Yes, the story was easy to follow and was hard to interpret, which I liked.
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22. I honestly feel like I understand the story so much better after reading this. I know this story better than any other story. Even though the story was sort-of twisted in ways, I understand more now what it all means.
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23. I feel that you can never really stop analyzing this story, it’s so full of symbolism, as I mentioned in one of my posts, subconscious symbolism. Its all there as long as YOU find it.
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24. I frequently found myself annoyed with the annotations. Additionally, the story itself lacked, at least from my point of view, sufficient symbolism to satisfy students of our caliber. A better method, I think, would have been to read the plain, vanilla, unannotated Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, discover what we could, then compare notes with the Annotated Alice (and perhaps answer some of our own questions along the way).
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25. The story I felt totally comfortable with, but there were so many of those sneaky little annotaions! Too many for my short attention span to pay attention to. They made it easier to analyze the text in general, but to specifically look at all of the annotations was hard. I liked this story and it had alot of meat in it; lots of ideas to work with blog wise!
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26. I do not think that it is possible to feel 100% confident, or 100% understand, AAIW. Yes, I understand what the story says, and get most of the references. But, I think that because of the framework and circumstances of the story, I do not think that anyone can understand everything. The main reason for this is that every situation within the story can be interpretted differently, and there is not necissarily one correct answer. This is shown by the diversity of the blog posts that were published.
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27. I feel fairly confident about the story, but not as much on the annotations. Some of them were weird and obscere, and didn’t mean anything. But I felt good about the bulk of the story.
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28. I feel great about all of this. I know the story very well, and I think all the annotations ring clearly with me. With all the reading we’ve done, it only makes the story better and more interesting to anyone reading it, and I think that all adults should read the book, if only to understand more pop-culture references.
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29. In truth, I feel that now I know certain parts of the story incredibly well. However, other part are rather confusing and in the dark. This selective vision is not necesarily a bad thing. It allows us to focus and truly understand certain sections which is more powerful that having just an overview. So in all, although I did not fully understand all part of the story, the parts I picked and analyzed give me an incredible understanding.
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30. This story is very detailed!! It tells you about almost every single thing that you wonder about. It honestly helped me understand the story better. I knew even before we started reading this story that it would be different from Walt Disney’s Alice in Wonderland. I didn’t know, however, that it would be that detailed. Annotations can help any reader to understand a story.
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31. Personally, I thought the story was just confusing overall. It’s not a typical story that I would read. There were a lot of the things I misinterpreted. I think that by having discussions with my classmates and reading the book over again I could become 100% sure.
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32. I understood the story, except I didn’t understand the chapter about the Lobster-Quadrille and why that was needed in the story. I didn’t and still don’t understand why it was important to Carroll and what was significant about it. Other than that everything was clear. The writing was hard to understand the way they spoke, but I just had to read it more than once.
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33. I loved the story and loved reading the backstories and possible meanings in the Annotated. I understood the book completely and its essence, and am grateful for the Annotated being there to help me along buchress my arguments. I feel like an expert on the story now, as well as the annotated note additions. I now feel, now that the project is over, that I could start a whole new blog and continue writing about Alice and analyzing its components- there is so much in there and it would take a long time to cover, but I feel I would be able to.
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34. For the most part, although a few things confuse me. I understand the plot pretty well, it just seems like the events and characters in the book are just to random and do not flow.
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35. I thought the story was very interesting and that there were hidden messages. Parts of the story confused me but for the most part I understand the Annotations.
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36. Yes, I feel I understand the story and annotaions now that I have done the project. Before the project i didn’t know as much about the background of the story. Now I have a better understanding. I am glad that we were able to read the annotated version because it I wouldn’t have been able to understand the story without some of the background information.
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37. I feel that I understand the information on a strong level. I comprehend the annotations and can apply them to the story entirely now.
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38. Absolutely, 100%, No doubt!
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39. I feel comfortable about talking about Alice, whether inside the classroom or outside. But not so much with the annotations within the book. The annotations were nice in helping us understand some concepts better, or even pointing out different ideas that we might not have picked up on at first. But over time, I felt the annotations were a bit overwhelming and very distracting. To me, the annotations drew my eyes away from the story so much that at times I began to lose track of what was happening within the story. I think that we should have read just the original version and do what we did in LOTF.
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40. Yes, the annotations were the great catalyst for me starting ro pick up my pace on the project.
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41. Some of the annotations seem irrelevant to me and I didn’t like that. The story made sense to me.
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42. The book never made sense to me. I had never fully understood this book because I did not see the symbolism. The annotations all seemed far-fetched and forced.
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43.They were very helpful, half my blogs might not exist if the annotations had not exsited.
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44. For the most part, although a few things confuse me. i understood most of the annotations but some of them sonfuse me. I will come back and leave another comment later.
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45. Yes, I found the notes to help explain the story much more in depth. Although it helped with many important tid bits, I think some of the notes were a little uneeded or drawn out to far.
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46.I definitely feel like an expert on the story of Alice. I my journey of exploring Alice, I found myself growing attached to the book. The process of exploration also allowed me to explore Wonderland and observe the minutest details. The skeptical point of view that was encouraged also helped me interpret Alice in my own way, while also observing the factual information in the story. The subtle details were definitely approachable. The annotations also give me a factual point of view on the story. I have always relished the opportunity to bridge the logical part of the world with the imaginative. This project allowed me to do that. Overall, I beleive that the comprehensive edition of Alice allowed us to see the tangential references to the real world. These connections give us the opportunity to see why Alice can be so controversial in terms of what the subject matter is. So my response is: Absolutely, 100%, No Doubt!
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47. I am confident with the story and annotated notes. I have been for a while. I enjoyed the text and understand it. The notes at times, did bother me and anger me at times. However, I understood them and can appreciate them more now. They seemed to block my imagination from coming up with its own explanations for things at times. That’s ok though, because they kept me from forming the wrong opinions. Sometimes I would have to force myself to read the annotated notes. In general, however, they were interesting.
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48.After the project, I understand more of the story than ever. The Annotated part is the confusing part. Some of the annotations were long and they went in depth about the most unimportant things.
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49.I didn’t really like the annotations that much because it seemed like it had no impact. The annotations were just obvious things that had no relation most of the time. Sometimes however, the annotations are what helped me get an idea from a blog.
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50. While I wasn’t a huge fan of some of the annotations, there was absolutely not confusion as to reading and understanding them. Actually, sometimes the annotations would help me to understand an even in the story that confused me.
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51.
After creating my own posts and reading those of my peers, I’d say I have a greater grasp of the text than the majority of the population. I’m not quite a scholar, and I might not be able to give a lecture on it, but I ‘understand’ it.
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52. I feel very confident about the story, but not so much the annotations. Facts have a tendency to slip my mind.
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53. I understand the story. But at times I feel as if I’m missing something.
The "Alice Project" 