Peer Review Recap Part 1

I think peer-review is very important. I got a lot of good comments from my group members; some tips that really improved my paper. As always, there were a few sections in my paper that I just wasn't comfortable with. Maybe they sounded odd or flowed poorly or something else, but I just couldn't put my finger on what was wrong. Peer-review helps to tackle these areas and pin down what is really going on. No matter who the writer is, there will always be things that escape him. The human mind cannot escape a certain level of subjectivity that will color its perceptions. A sentence may be poorly written, but I will never be able to recognize this unless I have another person point it out to me, because I am me (if that makes any sense--I'm not at all certain it does). Would any professional writer think of writing without an editor? Two (or three) heads are better than one. I found that when I would re-read my paper, I would read it as I had originally composed it in my head--this is not necessarily how my audience reads it. I have a feel for my own rhythms and how they should play out, but it can be difficult to convey these in a soundless medium. I know how my ideal paper sounds in my head, but I don't necessarily transmit this version to the reader, and certain amount of the revising process is trying to make my actual paper more like my mental paper. One of the best ways to do this is through peer-review.