When I was a sessional I used to joke with my supervisor that I would do all of the teaching for free if I could just get $400 an hour for marking. That is what my job feels like! The teaching and the research is fun. I love it. I really would do it for free. But marking – now that is hard work. Really hard!

Marking requires focus and concentration, attention to detail and a really solid understanding of the content. Those are the easy skills. You also have to ensure consistency and adherance to procedures. You have to communicate clearly to your colleagues but also in the feedback that you give to students. And providing feedback to students is not a simple matter at all. Their emotional reactions matter. Their learning matters. It all matters. Not to mention the emotional labour associated as we feel empathy for those that fail and frustration at those students who could have done better (perhaps if they had “just listened” or “if only they had attended more classes”).

I work 3.5 days a week now. But I can assure you that during the marking periods I do considerably more hours. No one and I mean NO ONE ever asks for those hours back as time in lieu (we call it compensatory time). No one does! We know marking is just part of our job. But for that 2 week turn-around period we do extra hours – wel all do. And the estimates from the university for how long it takes to mark each students work are laughable. I mean it is true that I can mark a good (high distinction) assessment in the allotted time – because there is minimal comments – most of which I can copy and paste. But a student that is a borderline fail – is going to take me double the allotted time to mark. Then I’m going to send it off to be moderated (near fails always get looked at by another marker), and have to look at it again when it comes back to me with my colleagues comments. Of course I am ALSO looking at the near fails and fails of my colleagues.

The two-week turn around is very strict and that includes late submissions. So while it seems like it is only 2 weeks of marking it can drag out and look more like 3 weeks easily. Conservatively, that is 2 weeks per assessment, 3 assessments per term. Two teaching terms in a year – so technically 12 weeks a year of what I call the marking void – where nothing else – and I mean NOTHING else gets done. 12 less than ideal weeks, 5 weeks of annual leave, and 35 great weeks that I love. I really am not complaining that is a pretty good deal.

It does surprise me that none of us take back that extra time spent marking. Maybe one day I will try it – try to change the culture so that we still have 12 weeks in the marking void – but then we have 12 weeks where we go home early to compensate.

In other news. I am presenting at the Learning and Teaching Conference (internal thing here at CQUniversity) tomorrow. It is for the meme project that I’m doing with Katrina and Byron. Should be fun!