Much as I hated taking them as a student, I think the instructor gets the raw end of the deal.
For example, yesterday my students presented me with 37 6-page exams (1 page an essay), and 47 5-page exams (.5 page an essay). That's a total of 457 pages, 60.5 of which are essays.
I spent three hours yesterday grading, and another today, and have finished 3 pages of the set of 37, for a total of 111 pages graded.
That means I have yet to complete 346 pages.
Doing the math (are you impressed that my language-y self can do math?), that's 27.75 pages per hour, or 2 minutes per page. Which means that I have 692 minutes of grading yet to come.
Yeah, that's 11.5 hours.
Even if you think strictly in terms of time invested, exams are worse for teachers. But beyond that, there's the fact that grading is almost mindless in its monotony. Gets tiring very quickly.
I think the possible exception to this rule is PhD qualifying examinations, and I might be willing to stretch the exception to cover MA exams.
Happy end-of-semester, everyone! Once I'm done grading, maybe I'll post about something interesting.
2 comments:
Gah! The amount of time you're pending on grading makes me ill. But if anyone can successfully balance all that hard work with the hard work of being an awesome mom, it's you.
yeah...grading = blech!
Especially right before Christmas.
Post a Comment