Peer review is a skill that can’t be immediately arrived at. Though at first glance it would appear to be a simple skill to offer constructive criticism to a peer, it is very easy to do an improper job at it, as it requires one to not only identify the flaws but what could be the solution to it. For a good peer review, one wants to make sure to offer some praise, such as I did by saying that the piece I read was a “good first draft so far, it fully felt like it had something to say the whole time and I never
got the feeling that it was only moving in place. ” But one doesn’t want to dwell too long on the praise or you can quickly get stuck in a rut of simply praising with no constructive criticism, or else you’re hurting the potential of your peer. When offering peer review, one should highlight the points that one thinks has the most potential. In my critique, I stated that one “thing I do want to see in more depth is the last sentence of paragraph three. I think that idea of family, friends and culture is a crucial part of the argument around Soylent not being an every meal occurrence.” Overall, the peer review process I experienced in this class was much different than any peer review I had experienced in the past. Past experiences have been highly informal, with little to no direction at times. But these peer review sessions created just the right amount of structure, allowing for good and clear critique to come across, and not simply a disappointing session all around.
