Sabrina Shao's 6th Blog Post

At my old high school, peer review was pretty common. In class, assuming our teachers assigned 10 writing assignments per year, they would make us do a peer review at least 3-4 times. It was also very common to find students going to the writing center. Our writing center consists of both English teachers and chosen students. There, people were given advice on how to improve their papers. In my friend group, I usually would try to get my assignment done at least three hours before it was due so that one of my friends could read it over and give me notes. As you can see, peer review has always been a big part of my writing career. Despite this, I have found that it is more useful for mechanical issues instead of conceptual ones. This is probably because most people, especially students, find it very hard to see past the mechanical issues. That is exactly what I do when I’m doing a peer review. I find it very difficult to focus on the content itself because I don’t really know exactly what I’m looking for. When I read a paper, I read it to check for the flow of things. To me, if it flows, it makes sense. This, however, is ineffective peer reviewing because this is not always true.

While peer reviewing my partner’s paper, I have come to realize the importance of the author’s note. It told me what she wanted me to focus on so that when I was reading her paper, I started to notice the content mistakes more than the grammar ones. Without the author’s note, I probably would have never realized these issues because overall, her paper had a smooth flow to it. All the sentences pieced together made sense. Even though this is the case, it doesn’t make up for the fact that certain areas needed to be emphasized a little more and with the help of the author’s note, I managed to identify those areas and give better feedback.

Even though the author’s note may seem a little biased since it was the author who wrote both the paper and the note, I have come to realize that in most cases, the author is their own toughest critic. I have always hated showing my friends my papers because I knew that it affected what they thought of me. Right before handing it over, I would reread my paper and think, “why did I write this? None of it makes sense. Everyone is gonna think I’m stupid”. The insecurity that comes along with peer review is what can push someone to write better. Often times, the idea of humiliation has made me stop in the middle of a sentence and change the wording, so that maybe it will sound better and that in the end, it will make sense. Even though I am constantly editing my sentences, at the end of the day, I still look at my paper and think “how on earth did I get into Northeastern with my shitty writing skills?”. Despite my negative thoughts on my paper, it turns out that the paper really was not that bad. There are definitely always places that need improvement, however, I do not usually do as bad as I think I did.