Really Responding By Richard Straub

At its core, “Responding--Really Responding-- to Other Students’ Writing” is about correcting the common misconceptions and fantasies that many students seem to possess about peer reviewing. Richard Straub, a former professor at Florida State University, starts off portraying the mindset of a student going about peer reviewing in all of the wrong ways (Bishop 162). Some of the mistakes are things like “Make your comments brief.” or “Don’t praise anything really...no need to get harsh or cut throat either.” (Straub 162). The question is then, if you do not do that, then what should you do to peer review correctly? Straub asks pretty much the same thing too. Pretty much the entire essay is either an answer to that, or other similar questions that students might had when they found out that the way they have been peer reviewing has been dead wrong. The essay goes question then answer, question then answer, and so on until the he gives another example. That example shows what you should do, what you should aim for when peer reviewing, that example shows how you can help to improve not only the paper you are peer reviewing, but also the writer

The student just wants to “Get in and get out.” with nobody being hurt or the wiser (162). I can relate to that mentality, and I’m sure that was Straub’s intention. He wanted to make students who don’t care, care. The contrast is apparent with the example of a good peer reviewer Straub provides right before the end of the essay. It helps to shed some light on ways that a past peer reviewer could have helped one of our works and ways many of us could have helped works we have peer reviewed in the past. The first example is meant to make us reminiscent of our own instances of peer reviewing and the second example is meant to make us wish we either had a peer review like that or peer reviewed like that in our actual peer