I once observed a colleague, also a great friend, who was possibly a little paranoid about running out of material in his classes, particularly the young learner classes.  Before the class he gave me a copy of his lesson plan, complete with stages, aims, procedures, timings – the works.  Then I noticed that all his timings were estimates:  “5-10 minutes”.  Not really a problem as activities never take exactly the time you expect…  until I added them all up.  In the short version of the timings, he’d over-planned by about 15 minutes.  In the long version, it was about another hour…

I mention this both as a salutary warning to anyone currently scratching their head over an observation and because I realised a moment ago that I’ve just done exactly the same thing…

I was just trying to figure out a necessary weekly time commitment for a course I’ve foolishly just started doing and I started thinking about “how much time things should take” vs “how much time things do take”.  You know, like “Job:  40 – 50 hours per week”…

So I got to the end of my list and worked out that in the short version, all my various responsibilities add up to 137 hours a week.  In the long version – 184.  Not too bad I thought.

Then I worked out how many hours there are in a week.

Oops.

The only reason this video’s here is for the classic line “you run and you run to catch up with the sun but’s it’s sinking” – I’m sure we all feel a bit like that at times….

Plus – when this video was shot?  I was there.

 

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