Yesterday I made my first foray into teaching... to a huge lecture hall full of second-year students! Talk about being thrown into the fire. I got to develop the lesson plan, prepare example problems, and teach the whole class (Statics) from start to finish. The topic for the class was the Method of Sections for truss analysis, plus a bit of coverage of the problems that had been on the previous day's quiz.
Altogether it went very well; I stumbled on one of my example problems because I was too into explaining one concept that I neglected another simple step in the calculations. Thankfully a student pointed it out and, after fixing the error and laughing about it a bit, all was well. I very much enjoyed the experience and am thankful for Dr. Van Den Einde for allowing me to give it a try. I'm hoping to do it again next quarter in the next class of the sequence, which is Dynamics (then Vibrations in the Spring).
Best of all, UCSD records a lot of lectures of undergraduate classes to publish as podcasts for students. You guessed it, there's a podcast of my lecture! For the so-inclined, you can find it here, lecture number 19 from November 5th.
Besides teaching my week was very busy with 3 different assignments and a midterm, and this weekend will probably entail just as much work. But, it's still beautiful in Southern California, so I don't have too be too unhappy about that.
All my best to everyone at home!
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