Thursday, March 10, 2016

Class work. My Experience with peer reviews/reviewing

I've always had a disdain for peer reviews and reviewing peer's papers. When other review my paper, I never feel like the input is any good. I get vague, lukewarm, or ridiculous feedback at the worst or I'm told I did well and don't have to change anything. Immediately after when I revise my paper, I am disappointed with them and myself because I end up loathing my paper for being riddled with mistakes and at them because they didn't catch anything. When I review papers, I'm afraid my feed back will be just as useless or annoying. I'm also afraid that I end up being too harsh when I try to compensate for that by being very critical. In the rare case that I get good feedback, I capitalize one that feedback. Both examples occurred on my recent paper. The first peer review resulted in me reading a paper that was written at 2 in the morning (the author admits that it was bad and went into full overhaul on the sleep-depraved paper) and me never receiving any feedback on my paper. At the second peer review, I read a paper that I felt was haphazardly written and poorly supported. I didn't enjoy reading it and went heavy on criticizing it. I saw that the paper had potential because it took the issue from multiple angles but it lost focus because of all the angles. I was left yet again, wondering if I was being overly critical. Here's the surprise though. I received good feedback. Nothing revolutionary but enough to show that how, where, and why my paper needed improvement. I got acknowledgement in my attempts to make my paper easier to read but was told that I hadn't quite succeed. I was glad for this feedback. At least now I know where to look.