I get the feeling that no one is going to understand the mental stress involved with teaching; sure, to start I'll only lecture about 6 hours a week to 30 students, but that number will grow in subsequent semesters. Fall 2010 could mean double that if I'm lucky. Outside of classroom time, I'll match each lecture hour with an office hour and will have plenty of papers to grade. The students will write every day; considering that I am a composition instructor, I believe daily writing is imperative if the students are going to approach the written word with any degree of skill, comfort or value.
Tally all that up and I've got 180 student paragraphs to read a week, 12 hours time committed to the students, and on top of that their major assignments--each of which will be about three pages long. Throughout the term, that's fifteen pages or so per student: that's 450 pages per semester... and if they give me three drafts, that's 1350 pages I'll have to read and annotate.
Plus there's the book-keeping aspect of things: grades, attendance, student excuses, my observations, being observed.... la la la.
And I'm looking for a second job.
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