Jury of My Peers

I found the peer review process to be a very interesting one. It was a new experience for me that I had never been asked to perform in that type of format before. I have never in my life been asked to review someone else's art directly in front of them. From the critical end it made me feel somewhat uneasy. Reading someone else's work you don't really know what they were trying to say, or how they were attempting to express certain event or emotions. Being critical of something that is not set in stone ie:grammar,punctuation, etc. made the process all the more difficult. You don't know how close the person is to that work or how much they really value your opinion. From the creative end the same issues arise. Work that you may be personally connected to may be viewed as unintelligent or under-developed in the eyes of others. I believe that could be the reason people are reluctant to write about topics that are extremely personal or tell stories where they are not viewed as the hero. Also at times on the critical end it's as simple as you have nothing to say. Sometimes people's work are just that good. I see the peer review system as extremely flawed and an ineffective way to judge someone's work.