Overall, my first experience with college peer review was unproblematic. I enjoyed receiving specific feedback on things I typically would not notice within my paper. Some overarching feedback I got through the peer review was to be specific overall when describing my examples. Leading into quotes and evidence as if the reader has no idea who or what I am talking about. Another area of feedback was to drive deeper into my past experiences in high school with annotation, previewing, quoting, etc. These comments felt most helpful because they gave me insight into what was most confusing for a first-time reader, and allowed me to make things clearer and specific. 

Reading my peers’ work helped me understand what I needed to work on in my own essay. It made me realize that I need to take some more time to dissect certain parts of my paper and become specific with what I’m saying. A big example of this in my paper was when I talked about integrating sources. My peers’ work was lacking in that regard, and I found mine was too. Looking back, it is a spot in my piece where the reader becomes disengaged, and you can sense the lack of enthusiasm I have about the subject. Seeing this in someone else’s work helped me identify it within my own. Furthermore, the biggest challenge I faced in my first peer review session was feeling like I gave too much criticism compared to my partners. I felt that as a peer reviewer, I was very honest and outspoken with my feedback and did not shy away from the good and the bad within the writing. I think sometimes there is a disconnect with people who are not as comfortable giving that direct feedback, especially in person, which I would say was the biggest struggle. But overall, I had good feedback on the page. I enjoyed my experience and liked having the guidelines to help navigate the process. Peer reviewing has made it a lot easier to identify actual areas of need in my writing and not just grammatical errors.