So I am not completely done with my peer editing yet, but am going to finish it up this weekend, but as far what I have learned to this point here it is…
What I have learned by editing my peers work is that everyone has completely different writing styles and I have gained a lot from that. There are somethings that I am not strong at when writing and by reading others work it keeps giving me ideas on how to add certain things in to make it interesting and what works and doesn’t work when trying to get my point across. Another big thing that I think is really going to help me is that my paper is geared toward the general public as the audience, and by reading my peers papers (who are the general public), I can kind of get an idea of the types of things they would like to read about… for instance if someone tells a lot of stories to back up their research, maybe they like to be entertained in that way. I guess in a way by reading others papers I feel like I am more on the right track with my papers than I had though… nothing is going to be perfect the first time around and I have to keep remembering that I am a college student not a professional researcher so this isn’t going to look like pure gold!
I usually hate editing, but this exercise was actually very beneficial to me and I hope my peers as well because when I look for specific things in their papers, I think about if I actually have those things in mine. And like I said before, by editing and helping my peers papers out, I am gaining more ideas on how to make my paper better as well as having a way to help other writers in areas of their writing that they might be having trouble with.
