ACDC - Teaching Assistant

Overview

Teaching Assistant (ACDC) at EPITA, in charge of first-year students ("prépa") in the C and Python programming courses. A 10-month mission from September 2025 to July 2026, combining pedagogy, technical supervision and code review.

10 Months

2025 Sep → Jul 2026

C Systems

PY Python

Context

At EPITA, first-year ("prépa") students go through an intensive program where they learn programming fundamentals in a matter of months. The ACDC (Assistants de Cours et de Développement pour les Connaissances) are senior students whose role is to bridge the gap between the professor and the students — helping them stay on track and actually understand what they're doing.

Tech Taught

Memory, pointers, low-level

Python

Algorithmics, scripting

Missions

Teaching

Explaining the fundamentals of programming and algorithmics.
Running tutorial sessions on C and Python.
Breaking down complex concepts (pointers, recursion, data structures) into simple, tangible examples.

Code Review

Reviewing student code and enforcing the EPITA coding standard.
Pointing out memory leaks, undefined behaviors, and logic flaws.
Giving constructive feedback that helps students improve, not just fix.

Debugging Assistance

Helping students use tools like gdb, valgrind, and gcc warnings effectively.
Teaching them how to find the bug, not just how to fix it.
Guiding them through the reasoning process step by step.

Evaluation

Evaluating student projects and exams.
Ensuring fair and consistent grading across groups.
Providing feedback to the teaching staff on student progress.

Supervision

Monitoring students during practical sessions and exams.
Maintaining a focused and respectful working environment.
Being a reassuring presence for students in difficulty.

What I Learned

Soft Skills

Pedagogy: explaining a concept five different ways until it clicks.
Patience: not everyone learns at the same speed, and that's fine.
Empathy: remembering what it felt like to be a lost first-year student.
Communication: adapting to different personalities and levels.

Technical

Deepening my C skills: teaching forces you to fully understand what you explain.
Tooling: getting truly fluent with gdb, valgrind, make, and the compilation chain.
Code quality: reading hundreds of different student codes makes you hyper-aware of bad patterns.

Why This Experience Matters

Being an ACDC is one of the most formative roles for a computer science student. It forces you to truly understand what you thought you knew, and it builds a level of clarity and precision in your explanations that no personal project can replicate. It also teaches you something essential: how to be useful to others without doing the work for them.