Andrew Stephens

I am lucky to have had many great teachers throughout my education, all of whom imbued me with a piece of their strong passion for the subjects they taught. Their influence, along with my fascination with the way my college professors built a story with the material, both within a single lecture and arcing over multiple lectures, led me to an interest in teaching others.

I grew up in Merced, Half Moon Bay, and Saratoga, California, and I attended UC Davis, furthering my primary passion by majoring in physics and complementing my math and physics background with a minor in philosophy.

In high school, as college applications drew near, I was unsure what field I wanted to pursue. However, it only took six weeks in my AP Physics class to turn my curiosity for the natural world into a strong passion for physics. In biology and chemistry courses, I felt as though their concepts and objects resided in a world entirely separate from my life. Physics set itself apart from them in this way. I learned about gravity, and I saw it all around me: people walking, soccer balls rolling down grassy hills, the moon hanging in the night sky. I learned about friction, and I heard it in the screeching of car tires on asphalt and basketball shoes on the floor of the gym. I learned about electromagnetism, and I felt it in static shocks and pulling on two magnets stuck together. Physics was absolutely everywhere.

While in college, I began my foray into becoming an educator, instructing high school students in a summer internship focused on computational physics. I gave a few whole-class lectures, led non-programming activities, and found myself guiding students one-on-one through coding roadblocks. I discovered that the process of nudging students along from their initial sticking point to that lightbulb moment of delightful understanding was very rewarding. 

Physics can be one of the most daunting subjects for students initially. Despite this, I have faith that any student can find a way to understanding and gain mastery given enough effort. The interconnectedness among every seemingly disparate subfield of physics makes it one of the most engrossing fields to delve into. Therefore, I incorporate analogous and familiar concepts when a student is having particular trouble with new material in order to strengthen their foundational understanding and build upon it at the same time.

In my free time, I enjoy bodybuilding and learning more about physics, Linux, and exercise science.