Observation of peer editing

Although I thought my first draft of my paper was a bit repetitive, my critic in class did not agree.  He said that he quite enjoyed my paper, and pointed out a few points where I might have been a bit ambiguous or repetitive.  however, I benefited very much from reading another students paper.  One of the main roadblocks for me in writing my paper was to avoid bashing President Obama.  The paper was to reflect what the cartoon was trying to say, not my political views on the cartoon.  As for my paper, i strayed away from bashing Obama, and stuck to what the meat of the cartoon meant.  However, the student whose paper I read did not follow the guidelines so closely.  As a result, the paper focused more on hating Obama than what the student's cartoon was trying to portray.  The benefit from reading this paper came to me in that I learned what it's like to read a paper that bashes something, instead of staying on topic.  All throughout high school I had trouble keeping my own beliefs out of my work; however, because of this paper I have learned how those papers come to the reader.  I wasn't convinced to believe his opinions by reading the essay; rather, I was turned off of the essay and thought of it as Obama-hating.  The most important thing I got out of this assignment was to make sure that I stayed on topic and strayed away from random, hating tangents.