I’ve always known that I am hypercritical or my own writing style and that I find it hard to half-ass large writing assignments like the one assigned to us. This definitely confirmed that I am just as hard on other writers as well.
To begin with, I had a hard time giving much of a review to the first paper at all, because the entirety of the draft was two vague paragraphs and an equally vague outline for the remainder, and a grand total of 3 references. Many of the questions weren’t applicable and I found myself wondering if I would lose points as well for not having much to say about this largely incomplete paper.
The second paper, however, I had to hold myself back from tearing into bits. I tried to be as gentle as I possibly could while critiquing this piece, because it felt rude to come in as an outsider and tell a stranger how I felt about their writing. Except this piece was truly appalling. Despite it being anonymous, the author still included their name on the piece and based of the ethnic origins, I assumed English was their second language so I tried not to be overly critical of the grammar — not much they can do about that. However, the paper felt like I was reading someone’s stream of consciousness. Many topics discussed in class were dumped into the paper and I just wanted to shout “THAT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH YOUR PAPER! STOP TRYING TO DISTRACT ME!” But that seemed rude so I left that out of the peer review. It was hard to critique individual aspects of a paper that I wanted to tell the author to burn and completely rewrite.
That sounds harsh, I’m sorry.
