Narrative Essay Reflection

When writing the peer review, initially, I thought it would be an easy task. I finished it fairly quickly, with little trouble. However, as I looked at other submitted peer reviews I realized that mine was inadequate for multiple reasons. My peer review, for the most part, was vague. When I tried to express certain strong points in the work of writing, my thoughts came out as generic. This is seen when I try to describe the language used in the essay I was reviewing. I said, “The language is natural. The language Melissa uses in her narrative makes it seem like I’m listening to the story from a third party’s perspective, the third-party being Melissa.” This statement offers a simple claim, “The language is natural”, but no form of justification. While I tried to explain the claim, it sounded repetitive. I was saying the same thing, only in slightly more detailed terms. I could have improved this part of my review by integrating my stance through the use of critical analysis and interpretation. I could have went back into her writing piece and pulled a specific example that I thought reflected her “natural writing”. I could have analyzed this specific part of the essay and offered my interpretation of it so it would be made clear what I thought about the language in the writing and even offer some insight into how it could be used in more parts of the essay. This issue also occurs when I try to explain what parts of the essay needed improvement. When expressing my thoughts on an area that could be improved, I said, “One part of the writing that needed explanation was the relationship between Melissa, Liz and Jenn. I felt like their dynamic wasn’t very clear throughout the story and maybe expanding on it would add more to Jenn’s story.” Again, I made the claim that the sibling dynamic was unclear, but I never gave any indication as to why I felt the way I did. I simply made a point about the essay and never showed where the issue occurred. I should have re-read the essay and quoted exactly the parts that made me make this claim. This indicates a need for my improvement in revising and editing. The criticism I offered not constructive in any way. My saying that I felt an aspect of her writing needed explanation does not offer a way to fix the issue. My review was more like a summary of my own thoughts of the essay, rather than a way for the writer to improve their work. I felt like my mindset going into the peer review was one sided. I just wanted to get it done for my own grade, instead of doing it for the benefit of the writer. The point of the peer review was to offer new perspectives on and ways to improve the writer’s work, which I feel like I failed to do. If I received a peer review like the one I gave I feel like I would not have been able to make much change in my essay, aside from the ones I felt I needed myself.

In-Class Peer Review Reflection

I preferred the face-to-face peer review over the online one. The in-class peer review was more in depth that the online one, as it allowed me to discuss why the other person felt like something in my writing needed to change. I felt like sitting down and having a conversation with the peer reviewer allowed me to actually understand what I could really improve on because I wasn’t just reading someone else’s instructions on a screen. It felt more personal because I was getting criticism from something I could confer with, a person that could answer my questions and offer their own insight. I could also explain why I did certain things in my writing to them.

Critical Lens Reflection

The critical lens essay was the one I struggled the most with. The concept of a critical lens essay was something that was hard for me to wrap my mind around. To describe a concept in one text through the “lens” of another was hard for me to understand. I tried to think of it as analyzing one concept by using textual evidence pulled from an outside text. This proved to be incorrect, as I didn’t really explain the text I was using for evidence. Instead, I was just providing support for a topic. This was seen throughout my first draft in the fact that I used the Davis text, which was my lens text, hardly at all. My lack of understanding of the critical lens essay was also seen when I wrote “The naturally tight curled hair that African Americans possessed was ostracized because it went against the established norm.” This idea was simply that, an idea. I didn’t explain where the idea came from or how it relates to either text. I could have expanded on this by using the Davis text here. I could have included a quote describing what Davis defines as normalcy and apply it to this idea by discussing what Davis would say about it. Would he refute or support it and why? This essay was one that I thought was going to be easier for me because I was very passionate about the topic I chose, with that topic being black hair in the workplace. I was able to write about this very easily because it was something very close to my realm of interest. However, this may have hurt the structure of my essay at first because I lost track of my lens text, and instead focused very heavily on the target text that had to do with my chosen topic. While I felt I was writing down meaningful information, this made me lose sight of my lens text. The Davis text felt diluted by my target text when I reviewed my draft after Caitlin’s comments. 

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