When I was preparing to teach my very first university class, I was so nervous. I was worried that the students wouldn’t respect me and that I would either assign too much or too little coursework for them to do over the semester.

I decided that for my first class that I was going to assign two essays and gauge from there whether I would need to assign more the next time. I put together a list of topics that the students could choose from. I wanted the topics to be something that would interest me, as I would have to read all of these when it came time to hand out grades.

I was very impressed with my first class of students. They were all very nice to me and I believe that they respected me as their leader. They had great essay writing skills and I found it to be a great joy to read their papers. In fact, I believe that this class did far better than any class that I have taught since.