Different from a basic high school peer-review, my first college-level peer review was certainly more difficult than I had expected it to be. Although it’s common to try and outline claims and ideas in all peer-reviews, it’s more difficult to expand on the identification of these claims and ideas, and try and summarize what their saying to fully understand their arguments. I think this is partly because sometimes you don’t quite know what the author is trying to convey, and when something is written in a style that is foreign to you it can be hard to figure out what they are trying to say. It was also harder to identify a quote sandwich. It is of course visually very easy to outline a quote, but trying to analyze it, and relate it to the argument is much more difficult. Having to ensure that the quote is relevant, in a useful place in the text, and is explained purposefully is a greater responsibility to the peer-reviewer.
I think all peer-reviewers have the given strength of being just another set of eyes. But above that, I think my greatest strength was my ability to outline when a paragraph/argument was missing a connection to a thesis statement. It is often easy to convince yourself that your writing makes sense and proves your arguments when reading it in your own head. But in reality, sometimes when others read those same arguments they have a hard time reading and understanding it the same way you do.
My greatest weakness was trying to ignore my own writing style and remember that somebody else’s writing sounds different than I would put it, but that doesn’t make it wrong. However, you also have to balance that understanding with a purpose of making sure that their claims are still clear to a general audience.
