Presenting

Recently, I saw a video of myself giving a public talk, and I had some very unpleasant thoughts. Among them: "Who is this mumbling lipid of a man who seems to have no idea of what's on his slides?" "Does he understand that suspending a sentence predicate for 20 minutes makes things very hard to follow?" "Is there a limit on how much wine I can have during this lecture if it's a school function? I paid my five bucks, and I need it."

I remember being in plays where directors or actors would disagree with each other about the use of filming a performance at all. Watching rehearsals may make people more stiff and self-conscious. However, watching this particular video told me I need to get serious about teaching as a physical performance. 

In the past, I have been too tied to the literal script of a paper I've read, and as a result I slouched and didn't make eye-contact. My solution to this was a looser structure. However, when I go off a scripted point in the script, my voice drops, my phrasing gets muddled, and I don't make a clear connection to the overarching points of information on the slides I have made.

Maybe this is just camera-shock and I'll get used to the lecture format as I make more of them. Maybe teaching is a much more complicated art than script-acting, and things will only change once I have engaged with complex material for a long time.

But, looking in on my talk felt a little like Rembrandt's take on teaching above, The Anatomy Lecture. It's somewhat colorless, but there's this shocking amount of fatty flesh.