I took a moment from another session of formative commentation on student essays (I read, read, read--mark, mark, mark-- comment, comment, comment-- and pray the students take at least as much time to look it all over as I have). What did I do in this stolen moment, you may ask. I added up the amount of time I’m paid to work on the class I teach and compared it to the actual amount of time I work on the class.  The calculation is not promising. Even though I have taken great effort to spend less time this quarter than in quarters past, I’m still alarmingly over the amount of time I’m compensated for.

Can I find more ways to save time next quarter, the last quarter of my teaching contract? I’ve gleaned one way from my officemate who is a full-time lecturer, namely shorter essay lengths. It seems since the time she was in my position as a TA to now the length requirements of the essays has grown (seemingly arbitrarily) and we aren’t sure why. I believe I shall think this over for next quarter.