Author: Kristen Gilbert

In every English class I’ve ever taken, we’ve been required to do peer reviews. In most of my classes, nobody actually wanted to read through three different people’s essays and offer suggestions for improvement, mostly because they were afraid of offending or honestly didn’t know how to improve the writing. I’ve been to countless classes where we did peer reviews that resulted in comments like, “Your essay was so good, I might just consider a title change!” with no new suggested title, or thoughts on where I might go with it.

These types of reviews were always a disappointment and made me feel like I was wasting my time. My English professor freshman year, though, had a different take on things. She said that peer review wasn’t necessarily so that you could improve your paper based on what your peers suggested, but so that you could look at others’ writing and find where their strengths and weaknesses were and apply your own thoughts to your own paper. Many times, she said, she never even looked at comments made by her peers when she was in graduate school, but applied her own critiques to her work.

Either way, I always feel like I fail at reviewing other people’s work. I can offer so many comments of “I like what you did here, that was very clever,” and “That title is so catchy.” What I’m bad at is pointing out room for improvement. I don’t think I’m afraid of offending someone; it just seems to me that every suggestion I make would be a total style call, and mine would be different from the author’s. This way, I don’t benefit from reading my peers’ work, and they don’t get much out of it either.

So far, this gateway course has provided much more insightful reviews, since everyone in the class wants to write. I always get such great feedback from all of my classmates, but I almost never know what to say when it’s my turn to reciprocate. I think I’m too easy to please when it comes to writing, as I’ve always enjoyed reading things. I’m great at sentence-level editing and correcting grammar, but these things are trivial when it comes to reviewing the roughest of drafts.

I guess I need some help on my reviewing skills. I know I’m supposed to ask the big questions: what was the main argument? Was the essay/poem/story effective at getting the point across? Does the tone sound appropriate? These questions should serve as a guide, but it always seems to be the same thing: “Yeah, I totally got the argument, and I love that you used this form to make it. I wasn’t really confused at this part, I think that you’re being too hard on yourself with your comments.”

I think that part of this is because I’m afraid of offending, but mostly it’s because I think everyone is so much better of a writer than I am. I almost don’t feel qualified to comment on their writing because I’m not even close to their level. This is harsh criticism of myself, and I know it’s probably not warranted. But I guess it’s true that we are our own toughest critics, and I’m continually working to grow out of it.

No matter where you go, writing is an important skill to have. This was one of the things that I wrote about in my application to the writing minor. Giving it some more thought, I realized that sure, writing is important, but the types of writing differ so dramatically that just saying a person is a “good writer” has a bunch of different meanings.

In the science field, there is only one kind of writing. I’ve practiced this kind of writing. State what you wanted to do, why you wanted to do it, how you did it, what the results were, and what implications it could possibly have. It’s tedious and not exactly fun, but it definitely accomplishes the goal of communication. No doubt, communicating is important, but this type of writing is not what I pictured myself doing. I’ve always wanted to take the boring literature and translate it for the layperson. I know that research is losing a lot of funding mostly due to the fact that scientists cannot communicate their ideas to the regular public.

Magazines like Discover are a perfect example of this. It is so important to close the gap between scientists and the general public so that more people can be interested in funding projects. There are two main issues  that I have with these magazine. One: they are too highly dramatized. Two: since they are print magazines, there is still a large delay in the time it takes for the information to reach the public.

I once read an article in Discover entitled “The Humans With Super Human Vision” (July-August 2012). I immediately perked up because hey, that’s really cool. I wondered about X-ray vision, maybe infrared or night vision capabilities. I was so disappointed upon reading the article because the apparent “super power” that these people had was an extra cone in their retina. This basically means that they had a different type of color receptor which allowed them to distinguish between very similar shades of the same color. The article made it seem like this was some sort of amazing discovery, that perhaps there was a whole new spectrum of light that we couldn’t see. But really, it was only found in very small numbers of women, and they could tell you when one shade of blue was actually different than another that a normal person would think was the same.

This dramatization really bothers me. I think that it is essentially counterproductive, because it sucks people in and then leaves them wanting more. They get instantly disappointed because they were expecting superman and they got “Actually I think this is more of a robin’s egg blue.” Who would want to support research about this? At least be realistic with the titles. Lead with what the implications could really be, not what people supposedly want to hear. I think it would be the best thing in the world to start a blog that has the same objective: communicate with the world the things that people are doing behind closed doors in research labs, but do it honestly. This way, there is no deception, and maybe the science world wouldn’t be hurting for money.

Going about the repurposing project has been daunting, and every time I come up with an answer to a question, it only seems to raise even more questions. The most difficult question of all lies in choosing an audience, because in doing so, we must also decide what we want our piece to make the audience do. It isn’t enough to simply entertain, we also must make a convincing argument. In thinking about what we want to inspire, we must also think about how we want to be presented as writers. This is a difficult question to answer, and one that I think causes me many issues when I do try and write.

I want to be so many things when I write: I want to be smart, funny, sarcastic but serious, cynical to a point, but not quite depressing, honest but not brutally so, and of course I want to be original. My problem arises when I try to be all of these things at once. I find myself picking apart everything I say, thinking, “oh, that’s too cheesy,” or “I don’t think everyone will get that reference,” and so I pull things out and put in things that seem safer to me.  Putting in the “safe” options kills almost any chance I may have had at achieving my goal of being funny or honest. I’m not quite sure how to achieve these goals, though, or if it’s really even possible. Many times I will set out with an idea for a paper, and I’ll attempt to be funny by throwing in a joke. Maybe I’ll let the joke sit in my paper until the very end revision, because I thought it was pretty funny, but in the end, I will inevitably decide that the joke is not funny, and cut it out right before I turn it in.

Every time I have that “light bulb” moment, I want to rush to write down my ideas. I tell myself, “this is going to be the best paper in the history of papers!” And typically I start off very strong. I start to lose momentum around the middle of the assignment, when self-doubt sinks in. I reread what I’ve completed and think it isn’t smart, it sounds like I’m making things up. It isn’t funny, just sad. It’s too sarcastic, bordering disrespectful. And since it is too sarcastic, it ends up sounding uncaring. I cut the first paragraph and rewrite it. The second soon follows, and so on. The process ends with my shining diamond of an essay coming out as a lump of coal. The disappointment is similar to finding that same lump of coal in my stocking on Christmas morning.

I am slowly realizing that my writing doesn’t have to be all of those things at once. There are times when it can be humorous, and other times when it can be serious. Just because one of my pieces of writing is academic and intelligent sounding doesn’t mean that the next can’t be whimsical and fun. When I think about how I want to be presented as a writer, the last thing that crosses my mind is “I want to be safe and boring but meet all of the requirements.” What I really want is for people to get my personality from my writing. I want to quit cutting out the things that make my writing unique in favor of those that make it mundane and predictable.

The key is to kill the self-doubting voice in my head that says my writing isn’t good enough.

I’ve given a lot of thought as to how I’m going to tackle this repurposing project. The whole thing sounds like a giant beast that I have to slay, beginning with choosing the piece of writing that I wanted to use as my starting point. I finally decided on my narrative about family, which makes the argument that family is just a group of people who have learned how to fake a smile together. This was very difficult to think about changing in terms of the audience, because who wants to hear that? I originally thought about writing a short story (or a long work of fiction), but I still wasn’t sure who I wanted to direct it to.  After a slew of really fantastic suggestions from my peers, though, I narrowed my choices down to screenplay or some sort of public service announcement. This still left the problem of the audience. Who wants to hear this mildly depressing argument about family not being that perfect? Probably no one. So then I thought: maybe someone needs to hear it.

Shelley mentioned to me in class something about foster parents or people looking to adopt children, which I think is a very interesting concept. Perhaps these people need to know what they’re getting into before they finally take the plunge and have children. But then there’s also the question of what I want the piece to do. I certainly don’t want to dissuade anyone from adopting children, as I think this is an important aspect of society, and lord knows there are so many kids out there who deserve loving parents. So I now I’m thinking that it shouldn’t be some sort of depressing announcement that makes people feel as though they’re getting into something that they shouldn’t, and they need to rethink all of their choices. I want to make people laugh about it. I want to take my gloomy narrative and make light of it, in the form of a video (or a screenplay that eventually gets remediated into a video).

I think, then that my repurposing project will be redirecting my essay, whose audience was just my professor, toward potential new parents to adopted children. It will be in the form of a funny video with serious undertones, and be used to inform people that life with kids will not be all sunshine and rainbows. I’m picturing a younger sister pounding on a bathroom door and fighting about stupid arbitrary things like who ate the last bowl of cereal. I’m kind of terrified that it’s going to fall flat, though, so I’m also considering other options at this point.

Let’s be honest: We all saw parts of Janet from Penrose and Geisler’s article, Reading and Writing Without Authority in our own writing. Many of us are handed a bunch of reading assignments and are told to construct an argument regarding them. Many a time, I catch myself paraphrasing something from a piece of writing in a way that could, in fact, strip its meaning. Why do I do this? The fact of the matter is that I just don’t care enough about the subject matter to really join in on the conversation taking place. I know that joining a conversation could start a disagreement, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but if it’s something that I’m just not passionate about, I don’t want to exert the effort to argue my point. Part of me is also scared that I will be torn to shreds by someone who knows more about the topic.

On the other hand, when I am passionate about something, I have no trouble taking authority in my writing. I tend to read everything as a skeptic. I like to start by thinking, “I bet a lot of this is just BS.” This helps make it easier for me to develop an argument. If the author can convince me that I’m wrong by the end of the piece, then I’ve probably enjoyed it, and I’ve truly decided where my opinions are. If I can point out various holes in the argument, it tends to make me more passionate about the whole thing. This, in turn, motivates me to join the conversation and take authority when I write. In other words, I produce something more like Roger’s writing. It’s more engaging and it isn’t scared to just come out and say “This is my argument.”

Last Thursday, during her interview, Maria Cotera told us to write about things that we’re passionate about. She said the best writing happens when we really love what we’re writing about. I think that it’s the passion that turns writing from a Janet to a Roger. We need to understand and be interested in what we’re writing about in order for it to really join the conversation. Though we cannot be that passionate about everything we read (some indifference is inevitable), it’s still important to at least attempt to write like Roger. I realized upon reading this article what a bore it must be for people to read Janet-esque writing, which is basically just summarizing the sides of the argument and making a bland statement about which side the writer agrees with. Her essay certainly didn’t strike me as particularly good. It was definitely eye-opening to read this article because I never realized that I was doing this, or that there might be something wrong with it. 

As a writer, I want to engage readers with what I have to say. I don’t want someone to pick up something I’ve written and feel absolutely nothing after having read it. This requires thrusting every ounce of passion I can muster into the subject at hand, even when I really don’t want to. Reading this article helped me figure this out.

So, here’s to being a Roger even when the material isn’t particularly enthralling.

Conclusion: So, let’s recap. If my essay looks like something Janet might write, I’m probably not interested in the subject matter and I’m trying to fake it to make it. If it looks somewhat like something Roger may create, I’m really making the effort.