Sometimes I wish I could grow facial hair.

I could feel its imminent arrival at the beginning of the week.  A zit of such volcanic proportions villagers would quiver in its shadow.  Normally such circumstances would not more than trouble me, but this particular week appearances are rather more important than usual.  The first week of my graduate teaching assignment.  I spent three hours speaking in front of a group of students with a diorama of Vesuvius on my face.  No the most auspicious way to began my career as a TA.

An excess of hand gestures

- makes you look insane.
It's bizarre. I feel myself doing it and tell myself to stop, but I continue to flail my arms about and gesture in nonsensical ways, hoping to get my point across. The harder I try to communicate to the audience the more blank looks I get. That glazed over expression is so distressing. I feel for my professors, we students cut them no slack. I can see why they like to turn the tables on us and require oral presentations.
Boy, teaching labs next year is really going to be fun (was that dripping with enough sarcasm?)