Kindness and Critique

by Cecilia Landis

In the first semester of this school year, I had the opportunity to take English 101 through my local community college, and I loved it. I left feeling like I had been given a slice of the world topped in its full glory with whipped cream and a cherry. I loved the work that I did in that class, I loved the material, and I loved the professor. It was everything that I thought college was going to be. 

Another one of my favorite things in this class was the peer review. We had to write about four or five essays throughout the duration of the class, and I had an opportunity to read some of them through a peer review assignment. My own essay was (in my own mind) a work of simple genius. It was titled 'Daffodil', and told the story of a dried and pressed daffodil which I keep in my room while also exploring a child's psyche when it comes to faith. I was in love with this essay and I was in love with myself for writing it. That was why I was so shocked when it came back with an absolutely negative peer review. I speak and think of it now as if it was a most cataclysmic event. My peer had taken the entire heart of my story, wrenched it out, set it on fire, and then left it back on the page to burn. 

I wasn't the only person that this happened to. I watched as the same person gave two more peer reviews, each one of them as disheartening as the last. Finally, I read her paper. Oh, Evil must have wept for mercy as her fingers hit the keys! The vocabulary (by all appearances) hadn't been given an update since junior high, and Grammar was not one of her closer acquaintances. The point of the paper itself was a sales pitch for dog ownership. Such elementary topics had not been directed into my line of critique since my first years of grade school. 

I held myself back from reviewing her paper and moved onto my other comrades whom she had so wrongfully assaulted, offered them what little encouragement I could, nursed my own wounds, and charged back onto the battlefield. This happened each time we were required to write an essay. She would tear my essay apart, I would stew for a little bit, read her essay, revile it quietly, and then move on. 

A breaking point finally came when we had to submit our final essays for the class. This was a big essay. It was supposed to be well researched and carefully followed through. Mine was both of those things and more. In 'A Simple Liberty', I discussed the contrast between modern American cancel culture and the publishing industry in Communist Russia. It was fascinating. I maxed out every resource and used every spare moment while writing it to craft a powerful argument. I worked myself nearly to tears trying to get it out, and when it was finally out of my head and onto the page, it was glorious. Every American bone in my body trembled in the light of what I had done. 

And then came the peer review. 

In a mix of stress and annoyance, I read her essay with the disdain of Ares. She had used three resources, and chosen several sentences from them, barely using them to help her form her argument. Most of the essay was just incoherent rambling about 'science' and 'facts' that were never proven in any of her resources. It was absolutely vile. It didn't help that I disagreed with every one of her talking points, but nothing could take away the insult of being humiliated so many times just to find this work of mindless chaos.  

Needless to say, I sank my teeth into it. I didn't even give her a chance to review mine before I had dragged her essay through the mud. No sentence was left untouched (not even the title), and by the end, I was so full of rage that my fingertips could have melted away my keys. The overall review that I left at the end was many things, but it was not kind. It was so much worse than anything she had done to me. 

There was a margin of about two hours before I finally took the review down and doused out some of the fire that I had released. It was really bad. I had never spoken so harshly to anyone in my entire life. I hoped that she hadn't seen my review in those two hours, but it was very possible that she did. 

That's it. There's no happy ending to that story. I got an A for my essay. Add some glitter to that, and I passed the class. 

Looking back, I realize that I never would have said the things that I did if I had known her. Every communication for this class, every assignment, and every comment was made online. I never met that woman. She never met me. Even if I had known her and hated her guts, I never would've been so harsh. 

This is something which my generation has struggled with for years. I can't tell you how many lectures I've heard on cyber-bullying and that kind of thing. Why is it so much easier to be unkind when you can't see the person? Herein, I think, lies the answer: when we speak unkindly to someone's face, we can see hurt. We can see pain. But our devices take that connection, that physical connection, and break it off so that we can no longer see a person's eyes fill with tears or the red climbing into their cheeks. We have lost the ability to be ashamed of ourselves for these comments, and I think that in this, we are losing the ability to communicate with each other as a whole.