The Faculties 
The Kids :D
Intro
This post is a sequel to Teaching & Living Alone (California ed.), where I wrote about my first-week experience working at AlphaStar. Due to a variety of reasons (mostly procrastination), it’s been a week since the end of my California work trip as of publishing this post. Nevertheless, this experience has been incredibly fun and valuable, so I’d like to jot down some of my favorite memories along with the lessons I’ve learned. I’ll share my thoughts through three different lenses: as a teacher, an employee, and an 18-year old living alone.
As a Teacher
There were 7 kids in my class, most of whom are either middle schoolers or rising high schoolers. Teaching them was truly a mix of fun and pain (mostly fun, though).
Throughout the camp, I’ve been pretty laid-back about the rules. The reason was mostly because I didn’t want to appear like a strict, harsh, “dictator” type of teacher. After all, I’m just a few years older than them, right? Especially during the first week, I tried to be super friendly and understanding - cracked some jokes before classes and satisfied most of their requests, even occasionally the unreasonable ones.
The decision, strictly speaking from the perspective of a teacher, might not be optimal. The kids soon learned my temper, and I found it increasingly harder to get their full attention during lectures or make them focus during work periods. If I could start over and teach them again, I’d probably be stricter in the first week, and make sure they understand the consequences of breaking the rules.
That being said, there are of course a ton of benefits for being a chill, laid-back teacher - the kids like you, the classroom is always full of energy, and the overall experience is so much more fun and exciting. Here are some of my favorite memories!
- I let them listen to music during work time, and their music taste turned out to be very questionable, to say the least. In particular, Andrew and Jason were fond of extremely loud monkey noises and Minecraft villager sounds. Sometimes I feel bad for their ears…
- “OK, BUT HEAR ME OUT!” - Melody
- Some of them found my LinkedIn profile. James downloaded the profile picture that I used and made a bunch of funny pictures out of that
As an Employee
Technically speaking, this wasn’t my first time working for AlphaStar. However, it was the first time that I had to deal with other faculties face-to-face.
At first, it was a little intimidating since I didn’t know anyone at all coming in. Luckily, I was able to make a lot of friends quickly. The faculty group was the nerdiest group that I’ve been a part of for a while (in a good way), and we had loads of fun - whether it’s…
- Staying late during faculty night to solve EXIT with Stephen and Kendra
- Chatting during lunch and listening to Nico and Theo discussing Algebraic Geometry (didn’t understand a word they were saying)
- Coming up with hideous Jeopardy questions with Henry and Ethan
- Going to Safeway with Keshav, Theo, and Stephen on July 4th
- Me struggling to solve the riddles that Henry gave me (dammit, hamming code!) etc.
On a more serious note, perhaps one of my biggest takeaways from this experience was to reach out more and do extra when you can. This might sound cliche, but it’s 100% true.
As an 18-Year Old Living Alone
This trip was also my first time living alone for an extended period of time. It was the first time that I flew by myself, lived in a hotel alone, and managed money myself. And living alone came with a lot of extra responsibilities, such as keeping my room reasonably clean, mixing up the diet to keep it healthy (you can’t eat In-N-Out 3 days in a row), taking care of myself when I got sick etc.
On one hand, it felt good to finally be independent and be able to take care of myself. On the other hand, nothing can really compare with home, right? 