Teaching Assistant at The University of Reading

In September 2018, at the start of my final year of studies, I began working as a teaching assistant at the University of Reading.

In this role, I worked to support a number of courses taught to first and second year students.

• Programming in C and C++ (1st Years)
• Fundamentals Of Computer Science (1st Years)
• Applications of Computer Science (1st Years)
• Programming in Java (2nd Years)

Due to poor staffing at the university, and my experience, I eventually was set to work rewriting the 1st year programming course. The teaching materials I produced for this are still used to this day, and I have had consitently excellent feedback from current students who I remain in contact with.

It is a point of personal pride to me that I have had multiple students inform me that they can tell when they finish the materials I produced and move on to the ones I did not have the time during my employment at the university to rewrite, due to the immediate and substantial drop in quality.

I believe that if nothing significant had changed, I may have remained in academia forever, persuing a doctorate and moving from a teaching assistant to a lecturer, and hopefully eventually a professor. Unfortunately, COVID 19 occured.

The University did not lock down promptly, and so I left my position in February of 2020 when the first cases began showing up in Reading. While moving into the private sector was not my intention at the time, I do not see myself returning to Academia as the salaries available are simply not enough to support my family.