That's awesome! We did it as a regular project but our professor picked all of our books for us. She picked like wicked obscure books, too. I totally feel ya though, they are so much work. For our project we were assigned two books by the same author and we had to make them look like they belonged in a set. She assigned everyone but me fiction books. I got a book about The Chaos Theory and a book about how the way we spread information has evolved... And she made us buy some books, measure the dust jackets, print the designs out and actually put them on the book to photograph. It felt impossible. Even just coming up with the designs. They turned out great though!
Have you watched the TED talk with Chip Kidd? He's a famous book cover designer and he definitely transformed the way I went about designing them. He's most known for designing the Jurassic Park cover that eventually became the well known T-Rex graphic for the movie. I totally recommend watching it when you have time! And he's great at talking so it doesn't drag on. I'd love to see how your cover turns out!! Good luck :)