Once upon a time I gave a guest lecture and did not die of nerves.

First, some housekeeping. Literally. The Husband and I were gifted a set of wallflowers for our wedding, and put them up the other day to try and make our dining room look like a friendly space, rather than a bright red, dark hole. Seriously, you guys, it's kind of gothic-ish in there. Or it was, until we put these things up.
Here is how it went down:
Husband: puts tacks into wall
Me: puts flowers over tacks.
Us: small talk.
Me: Stepping back. "Um, did we mean to make a Jesus fish?"
Husband: "It's not a Jesus fish, where do you see a fish?"
Me: "Well, that is the eye, and..." (pointing to the glaringly obvious fish shape on our wall)
Husband: "Shall we call it Moby?"
Me: "That's too obvious. Ishmael?"

So today I gave the guest lecture that I mentioned being terrified about earlier, and it went stupidly well. I learned that lecturing is not at all like giving a seminar, mostly because the dynamic is so different. In my experience, nervousness during a seminar stems from the fear that all of your classmates have a more sophisticated reading of the text than you do, and that they are waiting for you to finish so they can bust it out and make you look stupid. Today, my nervousness had more to do with delivery. Am I covering the most important parts of the material? Are they engaged? Am I being clear enough? Are they understanding me? Do I need to clarify anything? I stuttered at least twice, lost my place in my notes as many times, laughed nervously a ton, and actually stopped at one point to say "can you tell that I'm nervous?" At this point, they laughed. Not the "OMG, how can you expect to teach if you're so imcompetent that you're nervous" type of laughter, either. This was the understanding, "of course you're nervous, you're doing okay" kind of laughter. I felt better. Then we broke into groups and looked at passages and discussed them as a class. The discussion went beautifully- they were engaged and articulate, and at one point they even started debating! I take no responsibility for this, the class that I was in front of were just a set of students who worked well together, enjoyed the material, and all decided to focus and participate. That being said, the experience was super empowering and fulfilling- I can do this!