Thoughts about today's peer review

I'm not sure what everyone elses thoughts were, but I figured the peer review went well.

There we were, frantically reading, trying to give the writer some help to boost their paper from that Average to Good rating, when I had an epiphany. Okay not really, I guess it was more of a brain fart.

Initially, I paused and rethought what I was doing in terms of how to go about the review. This caused me to be partly irritated because I wanted to try and at least finish one review before class finished and the clock was ticking.

I found that it's very difficult, for myself, not to be too biased about my critique about someone's paper. The entire time I was reading it, I figured, "Yeah, that's ok, and so is that, but I would have done it a little differently. I would have done it like that. Why is it this way?" Everyone writes differently, but I suppose it's your dissenting opinion that helps them forge a better paper?

I assume for most of the class period I was more worried about providing accurate and well-thought responses than I should have been. One thing that I think everyone should realize when performing these reviews is to not force something to appear that you see wrong. If you go into the paper trying to find something wrong, chances are, all you'll see is something you disagree with. That's where my bias began to kick in. I went in thinking, "Alright, find something good that you can comment on, where is it, it's here somewhere." Thinking like that doesn't exactly exercise strong critical analysis. It should just be something that stands out to you, the neutral reader.

After my brief mental lapse in the middle of class, I tried to start over and elaborate on some of the key points that I was trying to make instead of flying all over the place. I think that clear and concise opinions will benefit the writer more than some of the jumbled thoughts I was writing at first.

Hopefully, I'll make it easier for myself next time. Oh well.