2019 - 2024
In July 2019, I was asked if I could see myself teaching basics of programming, C and Java immediately after apparently acing an oral exam. Of course I accepted. Two weeks later, I received an email with another job offer. This time for a logic course which I also accepted.
Before my first session, I was nervous. I was always scared and embarrassed to hold presentations. But after a few sessions I managed my stage fright. Later during my first semester, I learned that I impacted the lives of my students more than I thought. They came to me with questions and I could explain in a way they understood (at least from their feedback). After all I am still a student myself.
After my first semester of teaching, the pandemic forced every one home. So my teaching also switched to remote. I had to change a few things and I did some mistakes because I have never seen synchronous online teaching before. It was in general a hard time for all parties. At that time my professor also started to trust me enough to ask me if I would help to mark the exams.
My third year of teaching was still the same. Although I stopped teaching programming. In mathematics, I (and also the other student teaching assistants) avoided the mistakes from the previous year and exam results were significantly better.
My fourth and fifth year were much better. In-person teaching was back. By this time I had a much deeper understanding of logics and proofs than the years before. It was eyes opening. But one thing still changed for me, I started to teach database systems for another professor as well.
But at the end of my fifth year, I decided not to renew my contracts. I realized that I am getting older being 26 already and I don't have any kind of job experience in a field where I could see myself ending up. It wasn't an easy decision as I love teaching. The best thing about these five years was seeing the progress of my students knowing I had some impact in that especially if they were struggling during the semester.
Here are some messages, I received which made me felt proud about what I did in this position. And there were many more...
