From high school to where I am now I have grown in peer review skills. Previously to college I had little to no real experience with peer review, and this semester my ability to peer review successfully has developed. Under these categories I have labelled specific sections that I became better at in peer review.

Comments about ideas: Originally when I started peer review in this class my comments on ideas were lacking to say the least. On earlier papers some of my comments connected to my own paper, which as I developed peer review skills I realized that doing that helped no one. In later papers I shifted more towards real peer review with comments supporting portions of peers papers. One such comment stated “The idea that there is more to regular sponsors is a super out of the box topic. The quote after this does a great job of setting up both the idea of malevolent and benign sponsors.” My previous comments unlike this one had things like “This particular point strikes me as extremely important (as I put in my paper)” which after re inspection I realized that I shouldn’t comment on others papers with my ideas, I should comment on theirs.

Comments on Evidence: Previously I actually forgot to comment on evidence in peoples papers, but over time I realized that the comments that helped me develop my papers were those evidence ones. They helped me add vital portions to my paper, that further developed my own ideas. Specifically in later paper I had comments more like this “This section does a great job of further putting your claim out there and supporting it. This shift from benign to malevolent is very very common, especially from a child’s perspective.” Through doing comments like this I realized that a supportive comment is just as helpful as a criticism.

Comments on Organization: When it came to organization I went from broadly telling a peer what direction to go in to now directly pointing to a portion that needs reorganization. Originally I made comments that would tell my peer to maybe add a portion to a certain paragraph. Later I learned to make comments like this “This section, although very connected to your claim, also blurs the lines between the early benign vs the late malevolent. In Blake’s narrative the teacher is described as malevolent, and later benign. Maybe try shifting the word choice to further support your claim, and not just his narrative” which highlights parts the peer did well, while recommending changes to fix the section.

Comments on Local: For the most part I avoided commenting on local issues because in my class we tried to focus more on the other three sections. Although in my most recent peer reviews I tend to add small tidbits that point towards these local issues, but they are never the full purpose of the comment. For the most part at this level these issues are very small, and most of our class has gotten pretty good at fixing these issues on their own.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1O9YQdeiPI_5P-6z4Xcha3rdx3yvYyzKHFmNA0jw8hY0/edit?usp=sharing