In high school, peer review rarely happened. When it did, though, it was never taken seriously and never resulted in anything helpful for me. I won’t say I wasn’t helping the issue of not giving out half attempts at helping someone with their paper. I normally would just focus on surface level things. Maybe fix a comma here and a word there. The big idea of the paper was never addressed unless the paper was in shambles from the beginning.

Coming into this course, however, has changed how I look at peer review. Letting myself take time to read deeply into my peer’s papers and not just skim over it has allowed me to realize the potential everyone has in their writing. With how I look at writing now, those papers in high school that I thought had no hope most likely had a chance to be something great if the right help was given to them. I realize now the importance peer review is (especially when it comes to my own writing experience), and the power it can have towards pushing a paper from one level of writing to the next. When offering feedback, I’ve learned to not only mention the more local concerns of sentence structure and grammar but also mention the more global concerns like having a strong thesis or analyzing quotes deeply.

When I offer a review on someone’s paper, I tend to really focus on two things: idea clarity and quote analysis. I’m not the best at these if I am honest. I think that’s why I end up pointing those things out the most. Without a good solid outline of what you’re going to be bringing to the table, your writing tends to become very convoluted and chaotic. The reader won’t know what’s going on or what to expect. I think that the best way to have a solid paper is to carry your reader from one idea to the next, first setting them up with an overall summary in the thesis and then from there on. When you know what’s coming up, it’s also easier then to dig into your sources a lot more than you would if you have an overabundance of points being shoved into each paragraph. In one of my peers’ papers, she had vaguely hinted at the “good ideas” of the Prophets but then left that statement empty. If the reader didn’t know anything about the article we read, this would be a confusing point. I went and made a comment saying, “This needs to be explained more. I don’t think you need much, but if the reader doesn’t know about the ideas, this point seems lacking. WHAT are the Prophets’ ideas. Get that opposing side in there.”