I think that I am doing much better when it comes to annotation. I expressed my thoughts, but I was also critical of the essay. Yo-Yo Ma wrote the essay Necessary Edges: Arts, Empathy, and Education and it was published in World Post in 2014. The bio about Yo-Yo Ma is very interesting because it tells about all the awards he has received for his performances. It says that he began performing at the age of five and graduate from Juilliard and Harvard University. The last paragraph about his bio says that he advocates for STEAM education. The purpose for reading this text was so I could do this blog post and have it actually relate to the essay. Also, the title seemed interesting and I didn’t think that Yo-Yo Ma wrote essays. I thought that when he talked about empathy it made a lot more sense that critical and empathetic thinkin don’t always happen at the same time. Then how emotions help to play a role when it comes to music or art and that’s how he relates all of his topics together. I think the point that Yo-Yo Ma is trying to present is that it is essential that we have STEAM instead of STEM. The world is made up of technology and science,  but there is also art and music that play such an important role. Without imagination there wouldn’t be art and without art there wouldn’t be designs for technology. The arts allows for people to explore their more imaginative side and create connections between the sciences and arts. I think that it is important that everyone is exposed to the arts to be able to understand the beauty within themselves, others, and the world.

1. Invigorate- to give strength and energy to
2. Lascivious- feeling or revealing an overt and often offensive sexual desire
3. Bandwidth- the energy or mental capacity required to deal with a situation