Blog 8: Peer Reaper

Peer Reaper

This year is my first time being a teaching assistant (TA) and though it isn’t exactly peer reviewing, it feels similar. It walks the same fine line of trying not to crush souls/hopes/dreams, but offer useful criticism that creates better writers/academics/people. For every essay that I mark – because I am only a marking TA – I attempt to offer some immediately applicable feedback for prompt results (e.g., for the next assignment). My personal favourites are “avoid transitional statements at the beginning of paragraphs” and “avoid generalizing statements like ‘since the beginning of time…’”. I have found these issues run rampant in first year essays, and these changes are quick fixes that they can apply to the next assignment to improve their style mark. I then try to offer something more broad, that might be more difficult to change or refine. This might not be immediately applicable, but writing towards it should (I hope) prove useful, and being aware of a flaw is always beneficial. The last thing I attempt to do is find the good, and this can be hard, but there often is something positive to say about a piece of writing, even if it is minute.

I do this for the students whose essays I mark because this is typically what I find helpful. I like general stylistic edits that I can change immediately and quickly; they are instant results. Additionally, I know that I need the ‘big’ edits. These are the major flaws that might not be easily rectified, but are necessary to be aware of. In example, I wrote a paper (discussed in Blog 2, here) which had a fatal flaw. I was generally pleased with this paper, and felt excited about the ideas and evidence; however, I did not effectively explain ‘blue-collar pride’. The entirety of my paper rests upon the definition and my ability to demonstrate it within cemeteries. Without this crux, it is an objectively bad paper. With it, I think it can be good. Fortunately, Tristan Carter was kind enough to point this out. Now, for this class, I have every intention of fixing this issue and having it entirely rectified by April 15th – though it has proven more difficult and timely than I had anticipated.

Tristan was kind enough to follow pointing out the major issue of my work with a compliment. This bolstered my wounded confidence because I do, unfortunately, take criticism more personally than I would like. Overall, I believe this to be an important aspect of peer review. To be too harsh is unhelpful; it leads to injured morale and reduced enthusiasm. One could make the argument that I need a tougher skin, though in public school I was taught to follow the ‘2 stars and a wish‘ method. It seems that early in our education, it was recognized that criticism also requires compliment. Major criticism can be a hard pill to swallow, and criticism without any compliment is an even harder pill to swallow.