PhD Students, Teaching is “Real Work”
It really peeves me when I hear a PhD student say that they don’t want to teach because it’s only for academics or they get nothing out of it or it takes time away from their “real work”.
Teaching is “real work”!
And it can be extremely rewarding – for academics and non-academics alike.
I also understand the frustration. Our research is incredibly demanding. We barely have enough time to eat and sleep – let alone teach!
But teaching builds up the skills that allow us to take our research to the next level.
When we’re teaching a group of students, we’re part of team. We need to lead that team. We need to become a motivating mentor. We have to think on our feet when we get asked tricky questions. We have to communicate our knowledge to someone with a different background.
These are vitally important skills.
Our improvement of nontechnical skills is an essential part of our career development, whether we’re planning to be in academia, industry, or policy. It is what makes us qualified for the title “Doctor”*. It is just as important as any technical skills we develop (maybe even more so).
Last week, I received a UCL Education Award for my work as a postgraduate teaching assistant (PGTA).
I was nominated for creating my own PGTA position for a class I took the previous year. When I took the class, I really enjoyed the subject material (statistics, technical writing, and scientific presentations) but I became frustrated by the lack of organization and student support. Several students in my cohort were very stressed out about a class that should have been relatively relaxed. By adding a PGTA to the teaching team this year, the lecturers and I were able to set up weekly class notes and statistics tutorials as well as organize the online material in a more student-friendly manner. I’m so proud of the students I taught this year – they were much less stressed and much more confident going into their exam!
Most of my work as a PGTA is lab-based. This past year, I taught the homogenization practicals alongside two other PGTAs. We trained undergraduate and masters students to use large scale industrial equipment and demonstrated the difference between batch and continuous processing. With the help of another PGTA, I led a team of six undergraduate students in a week long intensive project on protein production. We had tons of fun and made a bunch of fluorescent protein! I’m also a lab supervisor for UCL’s iGEM team. I’m so excited for iGEM 2019 and I can’t wait to see this year’s project come to life!
These experiences have taught me how to critique scientific writing, organize and plan a research project, identify team member strengths, make an attention-grabbing technical presentation, and budget time effectively. I wouldn’t have been able to tap into these skills as effectively without my teaching experience.
I’m honored to call myself an educator. I’m truly grateful for the amazing mentors and teachers I’ve had in my life and, even though I intend to leave academia, I hope I get more opportunities to instruct and mentor others in the future.
Just like research, teaching is what you make it. If you put more time, energy, and talent in, you’ll get more out of it!
*Teaching is a really good way to build up leadership and mentorship skills, but it’s not the only way. I recognize that there are many PhD programs where teaching is not a requirement. Those programs often have requirements for outreach or entrepreneurship that build up nontechnical skills. The students who complete those programs are just as much “Doctors” as the rest of us.
Teaching is “real work”!
And it can be extremely rewarding – for academics and non-academics alike.
But teaching builds up the skills that allow us to take our research to the next level.
When we’re teaching a group of students, we’re part of team. We need to lead that team. We need to become a motivating mentor. We have to think on our feet when we get asked tricky questions. We have to communicate our knowledge to someone with a different background.
These are vitally important skills.
Our improvement of nontechnical skills is an essential part of our career development, whether we’re planning to be in academia, industry, or policy. It is what makes us qualified for the title “Doctor”*. It is just as important as any technical skills we develop (maybe even more so).
Last week, I received a UCL Education Award for my work as a postgraduate teaching assistant (PGTA).
Most of my work as a PGTA is lab-based. This past year, I taught the homogenization practicals alongside two other PGTAs. We trained undergraduate and masters students to use large scale industrial equipment and demonstrated the difference between batch and continuous processing. With the help of another PGTA, I led a team of six undergraduate students in a week long intensive project on protein production. We had tons of fun and made a bunch of fluorescent protein! I’m also a lab supervisor for UCL’s iGEM team. I’m so excited for iGEM 2019 and I can’t wait to see this year’s project come to life!
These experiences have taught me how to critique scientific writing, organize and plan a research project, identify team member strengths, make an attention-grabbing technical presentation, and budget time effectively. I wouldn’t have been able to tap into these skills as effectively without my teaching experience.
I’m honored to call myself an educator. I’m truly grateful for the amazing mentors and teachers I’ve had in my life and, even though I intend to leave academia, I hope I get more opportunities to instruct and mentor others in the future.
Just like research, teaching is what you make it. If you put more time, energy, and talent in, you’ll get more out of it!
*Teaching is a really good way to build up leadership and mentorship skills, but it’s not the only way. I recognize that there are many PhD programs where teaching is not a requirement. Those programs often have requirements for outreach or entrepreneurship that build up nontechnical skills. The students who complete those programs are just as much “Doctors” as the rest of us.
