Pre-Class Jitters
Yesterday, I started teaching my four week summer course. It’s a class I’ve TAed twice for, so I feel relatively familiar with the material. But nevertheless, before class starts, I feel quite jumpy. I vary between looking over my slides to calm myself and looking at other things to do the same thing. I don’t know which works better to make me feel less nervous. I’m not teaching in the same building as my office, so I walk across the street an hour before class starts to be near my classroom. And right now, I’m sitting with a cup of coffee, typing on this blog, and waiting for class to start in 40 minutes.
What’s really interesting is the difference in my nervousness level before class compared to once class starts. When I’m standing in front of my students, talking over the material, I feel much more calm. Maybe it’s survival mechanisms that kick in, and I force myself to relax. Or maybe I’m just dreading standing in front of the class way more than I should be. (Actually, obviously more than I should be as there’s not much that can go wrong in class – no threats or dangers.)
And the amount of nervousness I feel now is way less compared to presentations I had to give in high school. I remember standing in front of the class (all people I knew and had known for a long time) preparing to talk about a book I read and feeling my hands shake so much that I couldn’t stop them. There was nothing I could do to make myself relax. These days, the front of the classroom is a pretty comfortable place for me.
Monday’s class went really well, so I should have nothing to be nervous about for Tuesday. Some of the material I’m talking about is stuff I’ve never covered before, but I know it well. And with only 16 students, those faces will already look pretty familiar to me. Nevertheless, my leg twitches against my chair leg as I sip my hot coffee. In 17 minutes, I’ll go to my classroom and wait for my nervousness to subside.
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