It took me seven hours, working steadily, to do book orders for four courses and make a poster for one. I have taught all of these courses before, so I had a head start. But I also had some decisions to make, as I wanted to choose books that would really work. Then one must always investigate availability and prices of different editions.
I was not being slow, but seven hours seems like quite a long time. Let us see: perhaps I averaged 1.5 hours per course, and took an hour on the poster. One course was easy. Two just have a lot of books in foreign languages, so it was a question of finding out which I could currently get and where.
One is a heart rending intermediate language course and I even read up on some SLA theory and pedagogy, thought about possible freshman textbooks, and ran seriously through past experience in my effort to decide what to do. I am still not sure my plan will work, but I think I struck a good balance between overthinking it and not thinking it through enough.
So, how long would these jobs take you?
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
God, I have no idea, but it’s going to take me at least 3 times as long to grade these assignments as I thought it would before I began. Teaching tasks always take soooo much longer than I think they will.
AY. I am glad someone else has this problem. Now I am terrified I may not finish grading tomorrow before class. Help help. I am glad I’m not alone.
I’m definitely not going to be done. But it’s my fault because I graded things in the wrong order, plus, we all have to hand back things in our sections at the same time. And I don’t think all the others are ready either. So I feel less bad about it, but only a little.
I keep coming up with these great ideas for interesting and useful mini-assignments, but there just isn’t enough time in the universe to grade them all.
Not enough time in the universe, correct.
Also, the worst thing about grading isn’t even grading — it’s keeping records of it, in courses where there are lots of mini-assignments. I really, really need a secretary.
Ha! Yes, that’s what I’m doing today, trying to get all this stuff into my grades spreadsheet… and figure out why it’s buggy…
And a day later and I am *still* not finished, it is frightening…!