I have been so busy teaching this past month that it hasn’t always been easy to balance my teaching commitments with PhD work. It has been so beneficial to gain teaching experience, even though – to be completely honest – it can be challenging and unpredictable at times! I think when you first start out as well, it is more of a demand on your time because you might tend to over-prepare a little (better safe than sorry eh?!)… So hopefully next year I will be a little more confident and perhaps not need to over-think it so much! Obviously, for anyone doing a PhD and considering a career in academia, I think having that first-hand experience is really important for a couple of reasons a) it looks great on the CV of course and gives you lots of valuable skills and experience to talk about b) it can help you confirm if you actually want to work in academia / teach…