On Copying

Copies ARE available without paying out of pocket.  You write your test/worksheet, format it on F4 (legal) paper, arm the printer with your tub of printer ink and paper purloined from elsewhere, and print not more than two pages.  Disassemble the printer, and take the two, white pages to the other side of campus, where  a pack of four or five will gather to listen to you say, "copy" with various inflections while waving the test around until one of them says, "Ohh, copy!  Okey, okey."  Then she disappears for a while and comes back with a preoccupied looking guy who reaches for your test, disappears with it, and comes back a few clicks later to hand you the copy and confer with the nice ladies, one of whom will say, "no, no now, tomorrow/next week/later, later." I think this signifies that they think you want the copy immediately and they're giving the originals back so you can go make your own.  So you have to thrust the papers back, reiterating that it doesn't matter, doesn't matter, doesn't matter, sixty copies whenever, sixty copies, doesn't matter, and finally just walk off.  Sometime the next week, return to the office to inquire about the copies, and wait for the preoccupied copy guy to be found so he can open the sacred chamber of campus copies.  

It's a small, corner classroom with two rows of three copy machines wedged in formation between tables lining the walls.  Light is provided by whatever filters through the iron bars on the windows whose shutters have been broken off.  Stacks of newspaper-looking papers render the tables into dismally gray cityscapes from a post-apocalyptic Soviet country.  These are the tests that will shape the futures of the bright and screaming children running around outside of the gloom.  

You get up to 60 copies, one for each kid in your largest class.  And then you get 1500 answer sheets.  All of the above on the off-gray paper that's the unbleached color of newsprint but not nearly so refined--the sheets are measurably thick, have fibers that would give you splinters if the paper was made straight from pulp, not recycled scrap, and if you rub on it, the ink will wipe off without as much effort as erasing a tentative pencil sketch from standard copy paper.  

So now you have 60 copies and 1200 students: at the beginning of class, you assign one person to hand the sheets out individually, and one of the rowdy little guys to shotgun blast the answer sheets.  After the test, the students bring you the sheets and have been trained to show you that their tests are in good shape.  You stack them up and move on to the next class until every single student has had a go at one of them.