How I got over my fear of teaching

From ScienceMag:

My heart raced as I walked into the classroom, where 200 curious medical students were waiting for me. While the technician fitted my microphone, I gripped the podium and scanned the sea of expectant faces. After years of turning down opportunities to teach, I’d finally agreed to give it a go—and I was terrified. I dove in and felt myself whizzing through my slides, trying to get through the material before my nerves got the best of me. After a few minutes, a student raised her hand and asked me to slow down. I felt my face go red—had I messed up my first ever lecture?

I never imagined I would find myself in front of a classroom. As an introvert and a nonnative English speaker, I found the prospect daunting. I’d see colleagues face hundreds of students and give fluent, engaging lectures and think I could never match up to them. Instead, I decided I’d stick to research, where I felt comfortable running experiments, applying for grants, and mentoring individual students.

A few years into my postdoc, however, my mentor asked whether I could teach her class while she sat on a grant-review panel. Out of respect for her, I said I’d give it a try, though I was nervous. I spent hours preparing, listening to recordings of her past lectures and cramming her slides with extra information, worried I’d forget what to say.

So I was embarrassed when, just minutes into the lecture I’d so meticulously prepared for, the student told me she was having trouble keeping up. I paused, took a breath, and adjusted my pace. And to my surprise, the energy in the room shifted. Students leaned in and asked questions, and I began to feel more of a connection to what I was teaching. I was back on track. By the end of the class, nothing had gone terribly wrong and I was relieved to have fulfilled my obligation to my mentor.

Later, when I watched the recording of the class, I could see my teaching get better as the lecture went on, and I began to get excited by the prospect of improving further. With my mentor’s support, I decided to take on more classes.

And so a single lecture grew into a regular commitment and eventually a responsibility I embraced. It took time and practice to become a confident, engaging teacher, but student feedback and teaching evaluations helped. After a student told me my slides had too much text, for instance, I redesigned them to include more visuals and fewer words, and found that this change helped make discussions more interactive. Eventually, I was offered a position designing courses as well as teaching them, something I had never anticipated in my career path.

At first, I worried teaching would distract me from the relentless demands of maintaining a funded research lab. But I actually found it sharpened my focus and transformed how I communicate science to colleagues and funders. Preparing lectures required me to revisit fundamentals I hadn’t thought about in years, keep up-to-date with new science, and learn to clearly explain complex ideas. In the lab and at conferences, I slowed down and focused on explaining concepts and protocols clearly, resulting in better discussions and more collaboration. I even secured a major grant—proof that clarity and connection matter as much in funding proposals as in classrooms—and my teaching experience helped me gain an earlier than anticipated promotion to my next faculty appointment.

Looking back, saying “yes” to teaching was one of the most transformative decisions of my career. It didn’t just make me a better educator; it made me a better scientist. For anyone nervous about the prospect of teaching, I can only recommend giving it a go. It’s common to worry about language fluency, feeling exposed in a room full of brilliant minds, or being pulled away from research duties. But anyone who thoroughly understands their subject can become a better communicator with practice and by refining their approach over time. Sometimes the most fulfilling academic life is not the one we first imagined, but the one we build through both intentional choices and unexpected experiences.

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