For most of my life, friends and family have told me that I am quite good at explaining things, but it wasn’t until my first job as a Teachers Assistant in graduate school that I really understood what they meant. I have spent the last 10+ years working as a biologist obtaining both a bachelor’s and master’s degree in marine biology and have worked in seven labs. In each step along the way, I have always found the most satisfaction in teaching/training positions. In each lab I have worked in,...
For most of my life, friends and family have told me that I am quite good at explaining things, but it wasn’t until my first job as a Teachers Assistant in graduate school that I really understood what they meant. I have spent the last 10+ years working as a biologist obtaining both a bachelor’s and master’s degree in marine biology and have worked in seven labs. In each step along the way, I have always found the most satisfaction in teaching/training positions. In each lab I have worked in, I tend to take on the training role, because I was always quite good at remembering what it was like when I first started. Being able to point out commonly made mistakes before the occur and help new employees get on their feet was always rewarding to me. When I was getting my master’s degree, I taught three different courses as a TA, and absolutely loved the feeling of a class full of students coming to an understanding of the subject matter.
My teaching experience is mainly in biology, biochemistry, and biostatistics. Additionally, I have spent a majority of my professional career in the field of genetics, so I have a very robust understanding of molecular biology. The classes I was a TA for in graduate school were roughly 10-30 students per section and I taught 6 groups in total over the course of a year. More recently, I spent the last two summers mentoring a high school student in my UPenn Genetics Diagnostics lab and found that I was able to successfully connect with him and it gave me a lot of joy to teach him everything I had learned about lab work over the last 10+ years of my life.
I think my main strength as a teacher is to be able to effectively put myself in the student’s shoes to remember what it was like to approach a new subject without all the context that comes only after you fully understand it. In my course reviews, 100% of my students said they would recommend me as a TA and 21 nominated me for a Teaching Excellence Award. I look forward to continuing my journey as an educator!
