I taught SAT for more than 1.5 years, both online and offline.

Aside from obvious benefits like making some cash to cover daily expenses, I saw teaching as a great way to taste the first bits of the career ladder, to take up actual responsibility for the work I did, and to (of course) contend with capitalism.

But my teaching experience offered a little beyond that too.

Having to deal with mini-adrenaline bursts before each offline class (worried the students might notice something silly about my appearance), or having to rehearse bits of the presentation to make sure I was fully accurate, or managing that awkward transition from sitting in the class to standing up and walking around—all these little mini-challenges I put before myself when teaching, I somehow realized, made me confident when in front of others, fluent in narrating any content, and excited about whatever speech my mouth was trying to formulate.

I didn't give public speeches a lot. The first was when I became the valedictorian of my high school. I had to give the final student speech to 250+ people. The second one was last Saturday, for the AI500! hackathon, where the stakes were way higher. But regardless, my experience in a classroom held up.

They said I had a good pitch, but I was pitching knowledge for the past 2 years. Not on a stage, but in a classroom.