In Episode 04 of the Graduate Teaching Associate (GTA) series, I talk about how being adaptive (aka winging it and doing my lesson plans last minute) has actually benefited the quality of my lesson plans, their relevance to social issues, and my engagement with students. On a broader level, I discuss the benefits of being prepared in advance as well as the benefit of learning how to be adaptive and flexible with different situations and spur-of-the-moment whims and scenarios. I draw heavily upon the flipped classroom method and explain how I use this and am able to pull off great lesson plans with a solid balance of lecture and engaging activities without excessive prep work as a college professor.