A good teacher can change somebody's life for the better; I know that from experience. At all turning points of my career, a teacher or a mentor inspired me to set goals and work hard to reach them.

Throughout my career, I have sought opportunities to teach and mentor. Starting in my junior year of undergrad, I have been a TA for 21 classes, often teaching more than one class simultaneously—generally electromagnetism, electrodynamics, classical mechanics, numerical methods, and quantum, both at graduate and undergraduate levels. Those classes include a postgraduate diploma class. Picture a 21-year-old teaching a room full of engineers, medical technologists, and teachers around 10 years older. That was me.

My TA responsibilities often involve problem-solving sessions, preparing and grading homework problems, designing original problems for exams, and giving class lectures. On one occasion, a certain professor of the graduate-level electrodynamics class went to many conferences—25% of the class—and chose me to lecture in his place.

Now that I am in the Army Research Lab, I occasionally give guest lectures or serve as a lecturer for the same postgraduate diploma—sadly, that age gap isn't there anymore.