A few days ago, the last student from my first cohort in the Virtual Reality Nanodegree graduated, resulting in the completion of my cohort with a 100% success rate. Being a student of the course myself, I knew the importance of a good mentor. I received great mentorship from my mentor during the nanodegree, and now it was my turn to help others.
My cohort started in the middle of March. As part of my mentorship program, I had to give weekly webinars on topics relevant to the course. I also had to provide one-on-one help and track the progress of the students. Since I knew everything in the course plus more, I thought this was going to be easy. But I quickly found out that it wasn't.
When I was preparing for my webinars, I discovered that while it's easy to understand something yourself, it's much more difficult to make someone else understand it. Normally when I try to understand something, I relate it to something I already know. This helps me build simple analogies. These analogies are helpful only for me or someone like me. But when you're teaching to a general audience, you have to create analogies that resonate with everyone. The things common among everyone are really simple, everyday things. So, when teaching complex concepts, breaking them down and relating them to everyday experiences is essential.
Apart from webinars, solving one-on-one queries is sometimes fun and sometimes not. When these queries turn me into a student again and require me to do research, I love it. But sometimes errors occur because a student didn't follow the process correctly, and in these cases, narrowing down the problem can be tricky, though it helps me learn too.
Finally, managing and ensuring that no one falls behind is probably the greatest challenge. Everyone hits several roadblocks during their learning process. These roadblocks differ for each student and can greatly vary in difficulty. The most important thing is making sure students don't lose their motivation, curiosity, and drive. Overall, the experience has been great. I've learned several new things and interacted with amazing students. I'm now mentoring other cohorts, constantly learning—and I love it.