Peer review was a scary and foreign concept to me, I had never done it before in high school and I felt nervous to critique another persons paper. My professor was quick to say that the best thing to do was make honest comments on our class mates paper. I focused more on the positives rather than what they could improve on and I noticed things that needed work but didnt always mention something. This quickly made writing different in my own papers, I would catch myself making the same mistakes and change it before moving on reducing the amount of revision I had to do. Once we became familiar with the concept of peerreview we even began to actually help each other by leaving thoughtful comments and thinking of ideas they might be able to use in their own work. 

My first peer review sesion which was poor I left several comments but one of my better ones I left an idea of how to enlarge the paragraph and some supportive feedback. 

Comment from first peer review

Here is some supportive feedback that I gave while still trying to help the writer improve their paper. I learned that rereading others work can help me find things I could improve on in my own papers. For example including more quotes will provide more support for your claims and the reader will be able to understand your claim better. 

By the second paper I understood that the more feed back and ideas that I give my peer the better their writing will be. The more I comment the more errors I recognized in my own papers and the better my writing becomes. I find common mistakes between my peers work and my own and I find ways to improve and by improving myself I can then go back adn give my peers more feedback. The cycle is a loop and it repeats itself with every paper that we write. 

This example of my peer review from my second essay shows much more thoughtful comments and more. This gave my peer much more to talk about and change in their essay to create a better final drfat. 

In conclusion peer review and personal revision go hand and hand. The important part is taking your time to understand the writing techniques that your peers use and what you personally use. Writing improves with practice and the more you can learn and recognize the better you can make your own writing.