I assisted with tutorials two different courses at UCL, including leading individual sessions in my final year. For these I had to prepare and present example solutions to the problems, and answer questions from the students about course material.

PHAS0022: Quantum Phhysics

This second-year course covered the basics of quantum mechanics and some of the theoretical formalism behind it, through the spatial and momentum representations of the wavefunction, operators as differential operators on these wavefunctions, and the associated algebra (e.g. of self-adjoint operators and commutation relations).

I assisted with fortnightly tutorials in which I would take students through problem sheets, which they were supposed to have completed in advance. (Of course, it didn’t always work out that way!). Students would be able to see the correct solutions to the most difficult problems, and ask any questions they had about the course material.

Unfortunately, this course was completely online, delivered via Zoom, and frankly it was the most challenging teaching experience I have had so far. Generally, the students were not very engaged, usually leaving cameras and microphones off and not responding to my questions. Teaching this course really reinforced to me the importance of in-person teaching!

PHAS0026: Mathematical Methods for Theoretical Physicists

This was a third-year course led by my supervisor, Arijeet Pal, which covered a range of mathematics relevant to physics including tensors, Sturm-Liouville theory, and fluid dynamics.

I led weekly tutorials, which were thankfully in-person by now, and in stark contrast to my online experience, was my favourite bit of teaching at UCL! It was a challenging course, so the students always had plenty of questions, and I was often able to find an alternative way of explaining a concept that helped them understand it better.