the paper chase

Having a clear system for collecting student papers will eliminate a lot of confusion and save you time. Ideally, you will go to the class and fetch the papers from the students who are there, leaving the professor with your e-mail or phone number for latecomers. If you absolutely cannot come to class, the professor can collect the papers and pass them on to you. You'll negotiate the details of the exchange with the professor.

Require cover sheets. Cover sheets give you information about the writer and how he or she feels about a draft before you start reading it; they help guide your responses to their drafts. You will need to visit the class in advance to distribute the forms, or ask the professor to hand them out for you. When you collect the drafts, students will turn in the cover sheets along with their papers. Cover sheets can be very helpful as you're reading drafts, but they require advance planning on your part. Don't just show up the day that drafts are due and expect students to fill out cover sheets on the spot; you'll probably end up with rushed, hastily scrawled forms that don't tell you anything useful.

We've got sample cover sheets for you to look at and borrow from.

Be careful with drafts. Once you have the drafts in your hands, treat them with respect. This means taking pains to avoid losing them, protecting them from adverse weather conditions, and keeping them free of coffee stains, splattered pizza sauce, etc. This may sound ridiculously obvious, but it is far easier to lose a set of drafts and/or to spill beverages on them than you might imagine. Exercise caution, both in how you handle drafts and in how you talk about them. Do not discuss individual students or papers with your roommates or friends. To do so would be a profound violation of the trust that is essential to your success as a peer mentor. You can raise questions in the Fellows seminar and/or discuss the specifics of a puzzling or frustrating draft with Emily, Rebecca, Brad, your commenting mentor, your WF mentor, or the course professor.

Make sure the professor has a policy on missed drafts. No matter what paper exchange system you have, some people will not hand in drafts, especially on the second or third set of papers. You can decide how to handle such tardiness; even if you and the professor have set up a policy, you will still be able to exercise discretion. If someone calls you a day or two later, apologizing and asking when she can drop her paper off, you can be generous and accept the draft. But you certainly don't have to do so, and you are perfectly justified in returning the draft the same number of days late that you received it.

Make sure you know the answer to this question: What should you do with students who never turn in papers? You should have discussed this with the professor already (see the section on meeting the professor). The students will know that the program is mandatory. After all, they have to turn in the draft with your comments on it, along with the revised draft, when they give the paper to the professor to be graded. The professor will know if papers are turned in without original drafts with your comments.