Progress update

I’ve never danced so much in my life. I’m taking a 3-hour intermediate-advanced class Monday through Thursday, which means I’m in class 12 hours a week; on top of that, I’m trying finish off a few class tickets at my old studio before they expire. So this week, this meant that I was in class for a grand total of 16.5 hours. Basically, my life is just my academic work, and dancing. I know this is nowhere near what professional dancers do, but it’s been a definite challenge for me, since I usually average around 4 or 5 hours of class a week.

I get up in the morning, go to ballet class, come home, make lunch, eat, work on my project, then it’s back to class in the afternoon. Come home again, eat dinner, then reading and writing till bedtime.

The results are good, for the most part: a better sense of my center, and I am picking up combinations faster than I ever have. Even unfamiliar steps (sissone doublé, anyone?) are easier to master. I’ve also almost ripped off a toenail, and have been sore in the ol’ gluteus maximus, hamstrings, calves, quads since Tuesday. It was a relief to hear an older dancer tell me that she thought I had danced as a child–a great compliment to someone who started as an adult.

Oddly, I’ve gained a pound this week, despite the dancing, even though I’ve kept my diet steady. It’s unclear to me how this happened.

Going well: small jumps and beats. A fun combination: entrechat trois, entrechat trois, entrechat cinq, pas de bourree, assemble battu, royale. Grand jete entrelace & fouettes. Saut de basque. Flexibility is increasing. About two inches from getting fully into front and back splits.

Needs work: turnout, as always. Pique en dehors (lame duck turns). Sissone double with developpe. Pivote. Spotting with turns in a circle. Fast turning combinations, like: pique turn, pique turn, saut de basque, soutenu turn. I need to work on going faster without losing the spot.

And to remind myself that what I do is not bad at all, a day in the life of the lovely (Asian!) Royal Ballet dancer, Yuhui Choi (linked to from the balletbag’s twitter account):

Time for class!

Adult ballet: recommended reading

When I began ballet, I found it useful and encouraging to know something about what I was getting into.

A few books and sites I found useful:

1. ABT ballet dictionary: a wonderful online dictionary of ballet terms and steps. The first and most daunting thing about ballet is probably the language; it’s in French, and most teachers will use the French terms as opposed to describing the motion (i.e. 4 pliés instead of “bend your knees four times”). Click on a term or step in this dictionary and there are images and videos to make the term clear.

2. Ballet talk for adult ballet students: a great community here for all different levels of ballet students. I used to read this board frequently (never did any posts, though). If you have a burning question about what’s going on in class, this is a great place to ask it. There is also some excellent information in the archives; and a great sticky on adult summer intensives, if you’re so inclined!

3. Joffrey Ballet’s Ballet Fit: a guide geared specifically towards adult ballet students. Cheap, straightforward, with lots of good general advice. There are also some exercises and descriptions of the overal arc of a ballet class, which is useful. Not a substitute for a real class, of course! There is a section on pointe in the back for the especially ambitious. Of all the books I read when starting out, this one was the best in terms of practical application.

4. The Ballet Companion: not specifically created for adult students, but a beautifully illustrated guide with descriptions of positions and ballet history. Also discusses non-ballet dance, such as jazz and modern. An elegant book.

Have more? Put them in the comments and I’ll add them!

Adult ballet: who can dance?

Ballet has an aura of inaccessibility. It is, for one thing, considered to be an elite form of artistic expression, one supposedly requiring a discriminating and educated audience; one calls to mind mumbling, monocled WASPS squinting politely at the stage. For another, it is old. The stories of the classical ballets–Giselle, Swan Lake, and so on–are old. Melodramatic. Not terribly subtle, and they can feel emotionally distant. And there is nothing more inaccessible than the ballerina herself: young, slim, with a body so stylized by the demands of turnout and line that it can seem deformed, with almost all of her years swallowed up by classes, rehearsal, performance.

In this post, I would like to address the last part of this mythology. I would like to make a case for the adult ballet dancer. Or, more specifically, the adult ballet beginner.

If you are an adult reading this post (provided you aren’t one of my friends who are required by the blog gods to read it), you’ve probably fantasized about taking a ballet class for the first time; or if you danced as a child, you have contemplated returning to ballet. But perhaps you hesitate: is ballet really for someone like me?

I would like to speak briefly from personal experience. When I began ballet, in my very late teens–about 19, I was the model anti-ballerina. I was fat, uncoordinated, and nerdy. (I believe that I am still fat and nerdy, though less fat and less uncoordinated than I used to be–thanks to ballet.) I was running 5 miles a day, 3 days a week, which manifested in my body as the largest, tree-trunkiest calves I have ever seen on a human being. I had never taken a dance class in my life.

But I had always wanted to dance. And always had, flailing and jumping, in the privacy of my own bedroom. I flailed to any kind of music I listened to; Rodgers and Hammerstein, Mozart, Tchaikovsky, U2, Paul Simon, the Star Wars soundtrack, Van Halen. It was an embarrassing secret. It seemed unbelievable even to myself that I–shy, awkward, always the odd one out–wanted to do something so elite, so thin-and-perfect-and-preppy as ballet. But what could I say? I flailed on. And one day, there was a poster in the gym about ballet classes for beginners.

There was no epiphany. I did not one day climb on top of my chair and announce to the world, devil may care, that I was good enough, and doggone it, people liked me, and I would take ballet if I wanted to. I took a more cowardly approach. I convinced a friend to take the class with me. I figured I could hide behind her, and we would both be awful, and I wouldn’t feel quite so bad about myself. So she and I bought ballet slippers, skirts, and signed up for class. (I bought slippers that were two sizes too big for me, but figured it was no big deal.)

There were many, many people in the first class. I remember watching the advanced dancers in the class; you know, the ones that have been dancing for a long time, and to shore up their technique will take the beginner level classes. I watched them dance and I was utterly seduced. They were so beautiful. I thought to myself that I would suffer the indignity of being in this class, if only so I could watch those girls dance. After class, in the dressing room, one of them asked if I was a dancer. She was really a gorgeous dancer: lovely technique, long legs, curly hair. I said, no, no, I’m not a dancer at all. And she smiled at me and she said, oh, everyone is a dancer!

It was cheesy. I know. But I remember feeling the sincerity in her voice and really believing it. She wasn’t being condescending. She believed it. So I believed it.

What I also recall is seeing the look of total panic on the face of my friend during class. She dropped out after the first week.

I kept going, however. Not without a good amount of insecurity: I was terrified to go across the floor, and constantly got cramps in my legs and feet. I looked awful. I was not flexible. I wore these horrible yoga pants that did nothing for my figure, either. My shoes were too big. I couldn’t keep my balance. But I went, every week. If only to watch the girls better than me, if only to make the smallest bit of progress, because the dancing was more important than any sense of humiliation. I told myself that all I wanted to do was to be able to pirouette. Just one pirouette. And then I would be satisfied, and that would be enough ballet.

Six years later, and here I am. I’m still dancing. I can pirouette. I can even do two pirouettes. What happened in the meantime? Ballet has made my life better; it has shaped my body (although I’m still fleshy). It is a wonderful breath in the middle of my studies. It has taught me about the possibilities contained by the human form. It has given me a taste of discipline and sacrifice. And it has certainly taught me many lessons about humility, and about the beauty and value of sheer effort. The most important development, I think, is that ballet is a way to be honest. Taking ballet class is a manifestation of a wish I had for a long time. To dance ballet is to be honest with myself.

So, if you are thinking about taking ballet, I would tell you to go. Be honest with yourself. Everyone is a dancer.

next: getting started with ballet–the essentials.

a change!

If you click back to the first post of this blog, you’ll see that I started wandering apricot when I started graduate school. It was to celebrate a fresh start. I did the same (several times, I think!) in college, when I abandoned and then restarted blogs for travel abroad, the thesis, so on and so forth.

Now I am getting started in earnest on the dissertation, albeit at the beginning of the process (prospectus, oral exams). I am also planning to move in a few months or so. I feel the need to change.

I am going to leave this blog intact. Actually, from now on, I am going to gear this blog towards dance: a record of my progress, as well as posts here and there about adult ballet and ballet generally. It’s surprising to me that I am getting thousands of hits from people looking for information about hyperextension, insteps, etc., and so I wouldn’t like to simply delete this blog. And I expect that dance is going to take up more and more of my non-academic hours this summer and in the coming year, so there should be plenty to discuss.

As for the new blog, it can be found at http://asitwas.tumblr.com , and it will be focused on the rest of my life. I chose tumblr because of its gorgeous designs, as well as its ease of use. It is substantially more limited than wordpress, and seems geared more towards a fast, short, twitter, brief post style. But I think this is perfect for me, because increasingly, I have less and less to say about my own life, and I think that it will be more easily summarized in a few sentences or photos from time to time. To wit: I am getting less verbose about my own life. This is good for everyone, I think.

The tumblr blog will also be more focused on my work than my own life. This may change, but I rather like the idea of using the tumblr blog as a journal of my studies, replete with photos.

It will also be easier to post comments, particularly for anonymous commentators.

So: come and see!

End of term update

Not an exciting title. But! Things have been quite exciting for me of late; just take a look at the weekend I have planned:

clean room, Chinese vocab, Chinese homework, Chinese flashcards, 15 essays (grade), make book stacks (recent arrivals for the prospectus!), return library books, gym, microficheing, groceries, ballet, scrub down shower, lesson plans…

It’s a lot. And yet I spent today going to ballet class, napping, and playing video games. I did get the room cleaned, though, and I composed my grocery list. So hopefully tonight I can do 5 essays, write up my flashcards, and that should be enough for the time being. Tomorrow and Sunday are going to be nuts.

This week I have also been eating quite differently, so I do anticipate having enough energy to get through all of this. I have cut down bread, rice and pasta to amounts that I had never before imagined possible (about a cup of cooked rice a day, and no bread or pasta whatsoever), and also limited my meat intake (4 sardines, a little roasted chicken, about 5 slices of bacon this week).

I upped my intake of fruit–grapes, mango, strawberries, blueberries, raspberries–and vegetables–a TON of spinach, onions, garbanzo beans, bok choy, you cai, enoki, tomatoes, mustard greens. Mostly organic stuff. The surprising thing is, I’m eating a lot of food; I mean, I am even eating chocolate and the occasional cup of juice (I don’t drink juice, normally), and I have amazing amounts of energy. Normally, I have to sip at a frappuccino all day to get through my 7AM-7PM on campus Thursdays, but this Thursday I didn’t need it. I even managed to stay awake in Chinese. Shocking! I cut down on rice etc. because I sometimes do this when I start feeling sluggish. I’ve never done it to this degree before, and the results are really amazing. I don’t even want to eat bread or pasta anymore. And I LOVE noodles…this is really saying something. I don’t even crave it. I’m not ravishingly hungry at all.

I just feel light! Nice and light and able to focus. I have been eating about 1900 calories a day, and with this change in diet, I think I’m still landing somewhere in this range. I suppose I may go back to a higher proportion of carbs in my diet, particularly when I start doing ballet more intensively this summer. I’m taking an intermediate-advanced class that meets 4 days a week for 3 hours a day. That’s 12 hours of ballet a week from late June through the end of July! At that point, I may need to up the bread and pasta again. But for the time being, I feel really happy without them. I even think my skin is looking better…

I will say that to keep up the massive veggie intake, I have been going to the grocery store essentially every other day. So that is a bit of a drain on my time. But the results are worth it.

So…I’m feeling happy, if not as productive as I’d like to be. Hopefully by the end of the weekend I’ll be able to better judge where I stand for the last week (and the following finals week) of quarter.

High insteps, high arches: ballet feet

Spring break was all that could be hoped for; Lisa and Erik were very gracious hosts, and Berkeley is amazing. I’m in love with the Bay Area all over again, and can’t wait to move there in a few months! Now, there’s that pesky issue of a prospectus…

Meanwhile, I have been meaning to post for a very long time now about ballet feet, and particularly on the question of insteps. As with my hyperextension post, I’m no doctor or any other kind of authority, I’m writing strictly from my own experience, this is no replacement for a knowledgeable teacher or physical trainer, yadda yadda yadda. So! On with it.

• **

Ballet–classical ballet–is not a kind or generous dance form. That is, to a considerable degree, there is a very stringent and unyielding standard of what is desirable in the body of a dancer, and what is not. Attend any performance by a major company, and even a newcomer to ballet can get a basic sense of this: long and almost always thin. That said, there are ballet companies which take or even feature other kinds of bodies; the Joffrey, for instance, is known for the athleticism of its dancers. Some are downright stocky, and often very very strong, as opposed to the wispier physiques of other ballet companies.

The Joffrey aside (somewhat…their dancers are still very slim!) the prevailing trend in ballet these days is long and thin. Yet the demands that ballet makes of dancers go even beyond this already difficult to realize ideal; it extends to the very shape of the foot, and that extra inch of bone and flesh on the foot can earn a ballerina the envy of her peers. It’s no overstatement, I think, to say that dancers admire and want beautiful feet, even to the point of buying fabric inserts to give feet the desired appearance.

The ideal is, put simply: a strong yet flexible foot with a high arch and a high instep. As with hyperextension, high arches and insteps are all about the lines. When a foot with a high instep and high arch is fully pointed and stretched–oh, so lovely!

The Mechanics

The arch is the curve under the foot, between the heel and forefoot. The instep-perhaps a little counterintuitively–is the bony structure on top of the foot.

behold, Svetlana Zakharova’s ridiculously perfect foot!

For ballet, it is more important to have a high arch; this enables a dancer to get to a high demi-pointe, and if she is dancing en pointe, to get over the box of the shoe. From my experience, the jury’s still out on the functionality of a high instep; according to one teacher I’ve had, it’s purely aesthetic; from another teacher’s perspective, it has something to do with getting over the box as well. I’m not sure about this. But it is true that high arches and high insteps tend to go together, just as low insteps and flat feet tend to go together. My own feet are an odd mix: fairly good arches, minimal insteps; strangely enough, it seems that my left instep is a little higher than my right.

Alas, there is no way to vastly improve arches and insteps. For “banana feet” such as Zakharova’s or Alessandra Ferri’s, one must be born with them. No amount of ballet will ever get flat feet to look like those. However, feet can be gently exercised to improve arches–if only a little bit. Imagine pushing your arches outward in demi-pointe. The popular plie, rolling through the feet into demi-pointe, and then rising in releve is a great way to encourage the arches. For insteps, I suppose that imagining the instep pushing outward as well would help, as would making sure that feet are fully pointed and stretched for tendus and degages. But in general–you either have high insteps, or you don’t. When focusing on arches and pointing one’s feet, be careful to avoid sickling and pushing too hard, straining the ankle.

As I mentioned in my post about hyperextension, dancers with a lot of flexibility may tend to be not as strong as the dancers with lower levels of flexibility. This goes for feet as well. Strong feet tend to be flat, and curvy flexible feet have a tendency towards weakness. Both strength and flexibility are sought-after characteristics, and strength in feet is particularly useful for pointe work. Some young dancers with curved, flexible feet may find it frustrating to build the strength necessary to support themselves en pointe.

Dancer 1 has fairly low insteps; dancers 2 and 3 have high insteps!

A bit of historical perspective (my favorite kind of perspective)

Ballet dancers have not always been held to this standard. In the 19th and early 20th century, bodies and feet were not always pushed to the extremes that are now sought after.

Tamara Karsavina.

Not only did dancers from these days tend to be just a tad more voluptuous, in my opinion, but the expected en pointe look was also quite different. Above, we can see that Tamara Karsavina’s left (standing) foot is en pointe, but she is not quite over the box of her shoe. (The box is the rectangular-ish part of the shoe that encloses the toes and forefoot.) These days, it is expected of ballerinas that they will be able to get over the box of the shoe. A good arch makes this possible, and a high instep enhances the look. For example:

I think this is Zakharova again. Whoever it is, what an amazing line, from tip of her right toes to the bottom of her left!

As the 20th century progressed, dancers bodies became thinner, more streamlined, more elongated, more flexible, faster, and so on.

long, lean, and flexible!

It seems that many young dancers feel a great deal of pressure regarding their bodies, and feet in particular–”good feet” are banana feet, and “bad feet” have low arches and low insteps. They are particularly pressured about this when they are young and their bodies still somewhat malleable. But consider Margot Fonteyn:

Her feet are quite modest. “Bad,” even. Beyond her feet, she raised her arabesques only to a chaste 90 degrees–a far cry from the extensions in the above two photos! Yet my ballet teachers still carry on about how much she made of just a little precipite, or of such seemingly easy arabesques as above. Quality of movement, not quantity or length of extension.

I confess that I have a bit of an obsession with beautiful ballet feet. Sylvie Guillem, anyone? But in class I am always drawn to watching the dancers who are smiling, whose dancing radiates joy. Sometimes they have lovely feet. Sometimes not.
As desirable as high arches and insteps may be, it’s good to bear in mind that 99% of the audience don’t notice them–indeed, if they are in the nosebleed seats, they can’t even see them. High insteps are really a dancer’s obsession, and means very little beyond this particular group. This may be even more exclusively a ballet dancer’s obsession, as I can’t remember meeting a modern, tap, or ballroom dancer bemoaning the skeletal structure of their feet. Ballet can be exacting indeed.

Where the average viewer is concerned, what really counts is the expressive use of the whole body–think Fonteyn! Even one of Suzanne Farrell’s feet was partially crushed on one side due to a childhood accident. In terms of the feet, a pointed, strong, average foot is much more aesthetically pleasing than an unpointed, weak banana foot. And for balletomanes, the sum of the whole is much more important than the quality of the parts–even when it comes to something as basic as the feet in the pointe shoes. So in the end, as with hyperextension, slimness, proportion, line, etc, it is better to see a dancer using and celebrating what she has been blessed with, as opposed to watching a dancer with a perfect body (and perfect feet) going through the motions.

Hello blog, it’s been a long time & a meme

Hello blog. It’s been, gosh, weeks…I just haven’t had much to say. Sludging through the quarter, occasionally panicking about my prospectus, and the like. I’m headed to the bay area in the next few weeks for a preliminary research trip. That’ll be fun; all I need to do is survive my Chinese final and finish grading my students’ finals and I can plan plan plan.

Therefore: a meme. From Ms. Bride in exile! And I tag Satsuma and Ms. Babe, if y’all got the time

The Rules
Step 1: respond and rework—answer the questions on your own blog, replace one question that you dislike with a question of your own invention, add one more question of your own.
Step 2: tag other un-tagged people.

Make a list of things you can see without getting up:
This awesome 22 inch flatscreen monitor that my parents brought up for me to use, so i don’t have to develop a hump hunching over my laptop. My Chinese vocab flashcards, my brown summer floppy hat, and a green vase with a crackled glaze.

Favorite Etsy Shop:

I know not of this thing called Etsy, and it’s probably for the best. At least where my bank account is concerned.
What are you wearing right now?
A gray long-sleeved shirt, a delicate little diamond necklace from Mr. P, terry cloth bermuda shorts (they’re as hideous as you imagine), and my labradorite ring.

What color are the eyes of the person you love most in the world?
Brown! My favorite eye color.

What’s the last thing you read/are currently reading?
The Nasty Bits, by Anthony Bourdain. And a master’s thesis about an obscure newspaper in an obscure mining town during the 19th century.
What is the last thing you cooked?
sweet mung bean soup: raw mung beans boiled with sugar. yum.

What is your favorite restaurant of all time?
A roadside shack in Hubei, China where I had the most glorious potato slivers in vinegar. And Thai Lingo in Fullerton.

What’s your current obsession/addiction?
the Online Archive of California

What was the last gift you gave?
Tickets to Das Rheingold for Mr. P. I hated it by the way; aside from my longstanding distaste for Wagner, who was the only composer to have ever make my lips go numb in the middle of a concert, the staging was absolutely horrible and incomprehensible. My least favorite thing was the clown prostitute with big pointy nipples and floppy padded ass. If you’re going to do Wagner, bring back horned hats and metal brassieres! Bugs Bunny knew how to do it.

What are you listening to right now?
Van Halen.

What movie do you know every word to?
All the Lord of the Rings movies, Star Wars and possibly the 40 Year Old Virgin, (but this only because Mr. P is obsessed with that movie).

If you could have any super power, what would it be?
Learning by osmosis. I want to just put my hand on a book and know everything in it. Just imagine what you could do with foreign language dictionaries…the possibilities are dizzying. I think my nerd is showing.

What is your most challenging goal right now?
To wake up at 7AM every morning without wanting to crush my alarm clock into small small bits.

If you could have a house–totally paid for, fully furnished–anywhere in the world, where would you want it to be?
Big Sur, California.

Where is your ideal vacation?
I want to go to Greece.

Name one thing you just can’t resist no matter how bad it is for you
Any sort of Asian noodle.

If you could meet anyone famous – dead or alive – who would it be?
My great grandfather, who was a minor nobleman with 4 wives and an opium addiction. He’s not famous, but I think it would just be interesting to meet him. And my great grandmother, and any of her co-wives, just to see how all that worked out (or not. Apparently there was a lot of fighting)
If you could have any job in the world, what would it be?
If not a children’s book author, a writer/animator for Pixar.

You see a cute baby, what is your reaction?
cute, I guess? I’m very bad with children of all ages.

Your favorite day spent in another country?
Stomping through the Galway countryside with my sorority sisters, without knowing where we were going and when we were going to get back. We bought some pecan buns, saw a couple donkeys, and sang a lot of songs.
If your life could have a soundtrack? Name a song on it–
Quizas, quizas, quizas.

Which literary character most resembles yourself?
The narrator from “Why I live at the PO” by Eudora Welty. Her ridiculousness and her family’s ridiculousness ring true.

If you were an animal, you’d be:
well, according to a rather zany woman (you know who I’m talking about, Ms. Bride) from camp a few years back, my spirit animal is a unicorn. Everyone else got solid, down-to-earth animals like groundhogs, ravens, and mice. I’m not sure what it says about me that my spirit animal is imaginary.

What was your strangest dream?

Al Pacino was making me assassinate Joseph Lieberman in a Banana Republic with a camera that could morph into a gun. I was also at the cashier’s desk, and they were making sand in large buckets out back.

to publish or not to publish?

So, I sent one of my papers to a journal–not a particularly famous one, although it used to be fairly prominent–and it’s a go! However, I am hesitating on if I really want to publish this paper, because I think that it’s not as good as it should be. First of all, when I turned it in, the prof gave it an A-; imagine the mini heart attack that gave me! Moreover, there just were not enough sources to make my argument as strong as I would like to make it.

So is it worth it to publish an article that you believe does not reflect your strengths as a scholar (even if someone else thinks it’s good enough)? I am also concerned about the ramifications this could have on my career if someone reads it and is like–”this girl is talking out of her ass.”

Still, a publication credit is so very important…I mean, would a hiring committee really read it? Maybe they will. Maybe I should withdraw the paper. Ack.

Research ahead

OK. The lecture is done, the language study is going steady: I am ready to start writing the prospectus and to start with some preliminary research. That means that spring break is going to be spent in San Francisco, and more specifically, in Berkeley. There shall be fun having, but also lots of research to get the foundation for the prospectus. By the way, if anyone knows of cheap places to stay in or around Berkeley, your expertise would be greatly welcome!! A hotel would work, or if you know anyone who wouldn’t mind a little extra $ for letting me crash at their pad for a few days, that would work too.

I am also moving to Berkeley (or possibly SF) this fall, and would love some insider know-how about housing

I am going to feel sad about leaving LA. On the other hand, I must follow the sources. And my project, unfortunately or fortunately, is going to require tons of little bits and pieces–the information is not centralized in one or two big archives, and will have me chasing leads across Norcal.

But most of all I am concerned about leaving Mr. P; I think there is a good chance that he will come with me–he is looking for teaching jobs up in the Bay area now–but with the market being the way it is, even an elementary school teacher might have some trouble finding work. So I hope he is able to come with me, but I don’t know. And then…do we move in together? For myself, I am generally opposed to premarital cohabitation, but…rent is pricey. Hm. But doing long distance…ahhk. It’s too much to think about.

On the other hand, I really love the Bay area, and have always sworn (since I was 11, and visiting for the first time!) that I would live there someday. So it would be the fulfillment of a lifelong dream, sort of.

Possibilities, possibilities.

Giving a lecture: the post-mortem

Went well! Really! Went very well. I ran about 3 minutes short of the time, but all things considered it was a success.

The only glitch was that the phone on the stage of the lecture hall started ringing like halfway through my lecture. Strange, no? So I picked it up, and just said: this is a lecture hall. Do not call back. Then I hung up. The entire class erupted with laughter. I wish now that I had answered it and found out who it was–but the lecture must go on.

Little things I’ll keep in mind for next time:

• It’s helpful to summarize the preceding lecture briefly–in one or two sentences–before beginning in earnest
• Time really does speed up at the podium…slow slow slow
• Minor brain farts are an inevitability. Just recover, don’t freak out, and return to notes.
• Students are surprisingly generous and forgiving, and looking for opportunities during lecture to laugh or get engaged. Either that, or they are asleep. (I saw a few nappers). If they are asleep, then it’s pretty much impossible for you to do a bad job as a lecturer.
• Reading from a script really is OK, so long as you have moments where you either engage with students, or just speak more spontaneously. But TAs I spoke with afterwards said that it didn’t sound artificial or dry to have read thusly…so! Yes to fully written lectures.
• Slow down some more.

It was a good experience. I feel much more confident about my ability to be an academic…it’s an unexpected feeling. Lecturing is kind of fun.