After the First Course

This semester was my first time teaching a regular graduate course.

Not as a tutor in an intensive program, not as a guest lecturer responsible for one or two sessions, but as the person who had to build the syllabus from scratch and show up every week for ninety minutes. Every week meant slides. Every week meant deciding what mattered enough to say out loud. It felt, quite literally, like living paycheck to paycheck — except the currency was attention and preparation. After class days, I was so exhausted that I did not even want to speak for a couple of days, as if my voice itself needed recovery.

The first class was an exception. It was the only lecture I prepared exceptionally far in advance. I had used it as a mock lecture for a faculty interview, and I had already presented it in a teaching-focused program, where I learned how to teach and received feedback from many peers. I walked into that first class unusually confident. When the students sent clapping reactions on Zoom at the end, I felt a surge of exhilaration so intense it almost startled me — dopamine exploding like confetti. It remains, honestly, one of the most thrilling moments I have experienced.

The second class dismantled that confidence almost immediately.

I sensed, while speaking, that I had not prepared enough. I finished too early. I asked students questions simply to fill the remaining time, betraying a rule I had sworn to myself before the semester even began: that I would never force interaction in ways students might hate. I remember feeling as though I had committed a crime. I worried that they would resent me, that they would stop coming the following week. That fear stayed with me far longer than I expected.

After that, I poured myself into preparation for the rest of the semester. Teaching became my primary cognitive activity. My other research slowed. Slides expanded. Transitions tightened. Yet now that the course is over, what remains most vivid is not a sense of accomplishment, but a quiet accumulation of regret.

I keep asking myself whether I truly cared about the students — their interests, their levels, the possibility that the class was too easy or too difficult or simply irrelevant — or whether I was mainly focused on pressing what I knew into the allotted time, filling the audio channel so that I would appear to function smoothly, without pause. I am also unsure how my own voice fit into the course. Was it an identity students could engage with, or merely noise layered on top of information? I deliberately introduced discussions about generative AI — how we are using it, reacting to it, confused by it — drawing on interviews with figures in academia and industry. I hoped it would invite reflection. I still do not know whether it did. Perhaps it felt off-topic, excessive, or simply unimportant.

There were, undeniably, structural limitations. The course was online. Cameras were off. I spoke to black rectangles with names instead of faces. There were no raised hands, no chat messages, no spontaneous questions. Feedback was almost entirely absent. I could describe this as a limitation of the medium. But looking back, I am not convinced that explanation absolves me. It may simply be evidence of my failure to build a system that allowed response to emerge.

Throughout the semester, I asked advice from various people — colleagues about teaching practices, and students about what made them attend certain classes. From colleagues, I learned small but practical techniques: recapping previous sessions, inserting short quizzes to buffer time, and giving my voice a break before it became hoarse. From students, I learned something more unsettling. Their preferences were far more diverse than I had assumed. Some valued information density regardless of the lecturer’s demeanor. Others appreciated strict structure, even when they disliked it in the moment. Listening to this, I began to wonder whether I needed to choose a stance — to prioritize kindness and availability, or to focus on delivery and rules, regardless of being liked. Veteran teachers may manage both effortlessly. I am not there yet.

It may sound inappropriate to admit, but over the course of the semester, teaching seemed to teach me more than I taught the students. It forced me to update my knowledge, to confront my own assumptions about learning, about education as a system, and even about the future. I found myself wondering whether optimism is something a teacher must actively perform — not because it is fully believed, but because it is something that needs to be passed on.

I also suspect that this intensity is temporary. That once teaching becomes familiar, my brain will no longer be stimulated in this way. That is precisely why I am writing now — while the dopamine is still active, before these impressions settle into something more respectable, and less honest.