During my time at University at Buffalo (UB), I spent a significant amount of time teaching other students the skills necessary to approach problems in mathematics and physics logically and consistently. I tutored for the Center for Academic Development Services Lab (CADS Lab, now Academic Resource Center), in which I would be contacted by students from a myriad of backgrounds to get my expertise in helping them overcome the hurdles of their studies. My most often treated students were from...
During my time at University at Buffalo (UB), I spent a significant amount of time teaching other students the skills necessary to approach problems in mathematics and physics logically and consistently. I tutored for the Center for Academic Development Services Lab (CADS Lab, now Academic Resource Center), in which I would be contacted by students from a myriad of backgrounds to get my expertise in helping them overcome the hurdles of their studies. My most often treated students were from outside of the Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) disciplines but that did not slow me down in helping them to understand the material, and in fact was a boon to gaining skills in approaching teaching to those whose love of these subjects didn't quite match my own. It is ultimately like puzzle solving in these regards, I like to find a way to make the problems more digestible and the rules and steps less arbitrary so the student is left less confused and more confident.
As for more academic leanings, graduate students may take up teaching assistantships (TAs) in their parent universities, or work as adjuncts for other schools. I fostered a moderate career of teaching undergraduate labs as a TA at UB to students who were primarily in STEM fields. I had the task of explaining the weekly lab to the students via PowerPoint, and then walking around the room and helping with data taking and familiarity with lab equipment. I also performed adjunct work outside of UB at two local liberal arts schools whose primary focus was not STEM degrees, D'Youville University which promotes a robust Nursing program, and Medaille University (now closed) which is well known for their Veterinary Technician programs. In both these schools I performed the tasks of making the physics more tangible, whether through laboratory instruction at D’Youville or through the logical curriculum I created at Medaille.
