Adventures in Leading (Part II)

... And not too long later, I'm really excited about this leading thing. I'm super lucky that a few really great follows actually want to help me learn and can give me really helpful feedback while I repeatedly epic fail at trying to lead them through things (thanks for being such awesome sports, guys! :]). So I'm slowly making progress -- there are at least a couple of things that I can lead pretty smoothly now. (Shock!) It's so satisfying to be able to successfully execute a move. :D

A couple random thoughts from my Adventures in Leading thus far:

In blues, since there's no basic step, there isn't really any sort of framework or structure to rely on to know where your follow should be, or which foot her weight is on. But trying to start a move irrespective of where your follow's weight is is a sure recipe for someone tripping over themselves (or their partner). So a good lead has to kind of follow the follow after initiating a move, keeping track of where her feet are, and going with her so *he* can match up with *her* before trying to initiate anything else. Trying to do a simple inside turn, I at first had to watch the girl's feet in order to time when to pull her back into closed position, but I figured that one should be able to just feel where her weight is without looking and be able to get the timing just by the feel... and sure enough, after trying it a few times without looking, I actually got the timing down, and it feels surprisingly smooth now! Or maybe I shouldn't be surprised. It's always easiest for me to follow with my eyes closed, presumably since there's much less sensory input to distract me from the most important thing in partner dancing: connection.

The other thing is that, after getting a lot of feedback over many attempts at executing various moves, it seems that, at least in terms of the physical aspects, there does seem to be a fair amount of symmetry in the way I and my follow experience a move. That is, it seems like if it feels to me like it went smoothly, my follow generally agrees that it felt smooth; and if I think something didn't feel quite right, my follow also generally agrees. This is really, really good to know -- knowing I can trust my own perception of things will help me a lot when dancing with follows who don't give me much feedback.

I have to wonder about leads who don't also know what it's like to follow though... After dancing with a rough lead, I can't help but wonder if it actually feels smooth and enjoyable to him, or if he thinks I must enjoy being jarred and tossed around. During one recent dance, I couldn't stop myself from visibly wincing (and uttering some kind of corresponding sound) when a guy did something that felt much more like a martial arts move than a dance move (my wrist was very unhappy as a result :|).

On a related note, I'm finally starting to be able to relate to a lot of things I get from beginner leads, like how challenging it is at first to string together various moves naturally, even once you've learned to do them well individually. One point of interest for me though, is about hand-squeezing. As I expressed here not too long ago, the poor-leading habit that I hate the most is squeezing a follow's hands. I totally got caught doing that exact thing the other day. (Well, I'm not sure if I was squeezing -- I don't *think* I was -- but my thumbs were down! Bad!!) But unlike the other beginner-lead challenges I've encountered firsthand so far, this one makes me have even less sympathy for leads who do this. I must tell all my follows to yell at me every time I do it. :|!

And speaking of dance injuries, I seem to have incurred my first one. I don't mean the flesh-wound kind, where someone elbows you in the face, or stomps on your foot in heels -- those don't bother me any longer than the immediate pain distracts me from dancing (i.e., not very long at all). But last weekend, through a combination of mild foolishness on my part and what happened to be awful timing, I almost broke my arm off at the elbow. It was too fast for me to really remember what happened, but I definitely felt something like the beginnings of a snap, and it hurt like hell well after that dance. It felt more or less fine by later that night (except when I fully extended my arm), but I figured I should get it checked out just in case... I didn't end up doing so during the week, but it wasn't really bothering me until this weekend... when I stupidly tried to lead something that involved rotating quickly and building up lots of momentum, then releasing the girl from closed position (so she kind of flies away from the pivot point) and stopping her with my (apparently not-so-intact) right arm. Bad, bad idea. >_< Add to that the aforementioned kung-fu lead I danced with later that night, and it looks like I have thoroughly messed up my elbow. Not sure what to do, given that not dancing isn't an option. :\

Adventures in Leading (Part I)

So about a week ago, I started actually trying to learn how to lead in blues. I ended up (unexpectedly) diving in face first, since the day after my first real attempt, I had to lead in a so-not-beginner progressive lesson, and the stuff we were doing throughout the class involved a crapload of elements which I had no idea how to lead (being that I couldn't really lead anything at all :P). I don't remember what it was like the first few months I started dancing, but since I can remember, dancing as a follow has involved basically no conscious thought on my part. So I never really pay much attention in lessons, since it's never particularly useful to do so. I just follow, and when something isn't working, I ask questions specific to the problems my partner and I are having. So in this class, in addition to not knowing how to lead anything that all the other leads already knew, I had to actually pay attention and take information into my brain for conscious retrieval. Epic. Fail. Being so unaccustomed to paying attention in dance class, I couldn't help but zone out every two seconds, which made remembering what the instructor was demonstrating impossible. Not that retaining it would've helped me much, since I didn't know how to lead any of the components anyway. Gah. But I tried (and tried, and tried), and it was impossibly hard, and by the end of the hour and a half my brain felt like it had short circuited and melted and was leaking out of my ears, and I wanted to collapse into a crumpled pile on the floor. Like, actually.

I think that's actually the most awful dance has ever made me feel (brain pain FTL!). In any case, I was really frustrated because the kind words of reassurance people were giving me (while I appreciated the sentiment) weren't helping anything. People seem to think that when I say I can't lead or am bad at leading, I mean I can't-and-won't-ever-be-able-to lead or lead well, in a boo-hoo, woe-is-me sort of way. That's not how I feel at all -- I just know that I currently don't know how to do anything, and I want to learn how to do stuff (properly), which requires a) being shown how to do stuff, and b) recognizing when I'm not doing it properly, so I can figure out how to fix it. This is why comments like "No, you're a good lead!" and "You'll be fine!" just frustrate and dishearten me more -- they're not constructive, don't actually help me get anywhere, and make me feel like I won't be able to get the kind of feedback I actually need in order to improve (i.e., hopeless :P).

But moving on... One observation I've made so far has to do with connection and counterbalance. As a salsa dancer, one of the biggest challenges for me as a follow in blues is connecting with my back to my lead's hand/arm. I've been told my closed position following is good (maybe from having done some tango back when I started dancing?), but that relies on connection through the front of the torso and through the legs. Once there's some space between me and my lead, we rely hugely on connection between his arm and my back, and that's something that's totally foreign to salsa -- being in almost constant opposition to one another, and trusting your partner to counterbalance you. (There's exactly one common move I can think of in salsa, called a Coca-Cola around here, that uses this same kind of connection. But even that doesn't require deliberate connection on the part of either lead or follow, since there's centripetal force there creating that connection whether you want it or not.)

This is the same thing that I'm having the most trouble with now that I'm trying to lead: I'm used to handling my own weight and keeping my own balance, and suddenly I have to handle not only my own weight, but also the weight of my follow -- and I have to do it almost all the time, because of the nature of the connection. I practiced leading a bunch in one night, and the next morning I woke up with my entire back and whole right side incredibly sore. (This despite forgetting to counterbalance my follow almost all the time, and almost toppling both of us over repeatedly as a result. :|) I made various semi-joking comments about having to work out if I want to be able to lead, but the fact that other blues leads I know who come from salsa had the same problem when they started in blues tells me that it isn't just that I'm a lame weakling -- the kind of connection in blues is indeed very different from salsa.

When just starting to learn how, trying to lead in a dance you already dance as a follow is like trying to write poetry in a language you've only just begun to learn.

Life, quantified

I just read this article about self-measurement. It's full of accounts of people who have undertaken self-measurement projects for various reasons, like trying to optimize their running performance, quit smoking, quit coffee, deal with sleep disorders, or improve productivity at work. I found the article quite thought-provoking in its own right, although all the descriptions of people hooking themselves up to sensors of various kinds made me think of this talk about how games will invade real live, as well as this TED Talk about harnessing the power of gamers, both of which I found quite interesting from the perspective of trying to shape the everyday behaviour of gamers (or would-be gamers... or maybe just anyone, really) by introducing into real life some of the same elements that drive them to happily spend hours training/leveling-up their characters, going after some kind of epic weapon or gear, or trying to beat a high score. I refer to gamers as if they're some kind of foreign group, but there's a very good reason I've deliberately avoided playing most video games for the last few years... in any case, my interest in the issue comes from a desire to more effectively shape my own behaviour.

I think I would do well to keep a detailed record of my activities, even just for some set period of time like a week or two. I can't even imagine how much time I don't realize I waste doing absolutely nothing of any productive value (entertainment/recreation counting as productive in some sense). I think seeing some hard numbers in front of me would shock some self-control into me. That's certainly the case when it comes to my spending habits, at least.

On a different note, the social aspects of self-measurement (when the collected information is broadcast) are also really interesting... In situations like trying to quit smoking, I could see how making your data available to friends might enable them to help keep you on track. But this part of the article gave me pause:

Jon Cousins is a 54-year-old software entrepreneur and former advertising executive who was given a diagnosis in 2007 of bipolar affective disorder. Cousins built a self-tracking system to help manage his feelings, which he called Moodscope; now used by about 1,000 others, Moodscope automatically sends e-mail with mood-tracking scores to a few select friends. “My life was changed radically,” Cousins told me recently in an e-mail message. “If I got the odd dip, my friends wanted to know why.” Sometimes, after he records a low score, a friend might simply e-mail: “?” Cousins replies, and that act alone makes him feel better.

As uncomfortable as I am with the idea of, say, Google Latitude, I think I'd really like to know when my friends are feeling down or especially happy, even if it isn't over something they'd consider worth going out of their way to talk to or tell someone about. At the same time, I'm not sure how I'd feel about sharing that kind of info if I were to track it myself... though I guess if the sharing bit were user-controlled, that would be less of an issue.

Today's lesson about going with the flow

Today we had the second annual meeting of Ontario iGEM teams. Last year's meeting was held at Waterloo since we were the ones organizing it, but with the aim of increasing iGEM's visibility within the microbiology community (which has a lot to offer iGEM in terms of faculty and graduate student support), we decided to hold this year's meeting at the 60th Conference of the Canadian Society of Microbiologists. Despite a number of hiccups and hitches in the organization process, the meeting ended up being fairly productive, and I was (somewhat unsettlingly) satisfied at the end of the day. Other musings regarding the meeting will most likely end up here at some point, but I think I learned one important lesson today about going with the flow:

Do not argue about going with the flow.

Going with the flow is something that will happen when it's necessary, whether you plan for it or not. No matter how much of a consensus a group might reach on following a given Super-Awesome Plan of Action, if the plan just doesn't seem to be working in practice, like it or not, the group will then have to devise another strategy — whether this means scaling back a project, redefining previously assigned roles and responsibilities, or any other changes that are appropriate for the given circumstances. But it seems like, in many cases, it's difficult to generate agreement to play things by ear, perhaps because such arguments are often mistaken for opposition to having a Plan A.

Of course you want to come up with the best plan you can for achieving your objectives, but, even when you've learned from firsthand experience that such plans aren't especially likely to pan out as hoped, trying to get people to agree to be ready to adapt if and when the situation calls for it is a waste of energy given that they won't have a choice in the matter when it comes down to it.

There's more I wanted to say on this, but I am losing (very badly) the battle to stay awake, so I leave it at that for now.

Something from nothing

For a while now, I've been meaning to write about my recent thoughts on my iGEM team, but (despite multiple reminders in the form of blog posts by other iGEM-ers) I kept getting distracted by other things. Somewhat ironically, a chat with a certain blues-ing gentleman about my lack of dance-related posts lead to discussion of torch-passing, which is exactly what's been on my mind regarding iGEM.

When I first got involved with iGEM in 2007, there wasn't really much of a team. It was our first year competing independently (rather than as a joint team with UofT, as in the two years before), and though there were a handful of interested students, there was essentially no structure or organization, let alone defined roles. At the start of the competition year, aside from a bit of money we had left over from the previous year's fundraising efforts, we also lacked resources (not to mention lab space).

That first year, three of us were doing almost everything, from fundraising to securing lab space, to designing the project and learning lab techniques, to working in the lab until ridiculous hours of the night and training other students in the lab skills we'd only just learned ourselves. A few other students were involved as well, but it was the three of us who were trying to build a team from pretty much nothing, holding everything together and driving it forward. (I remember how it was like Christmas, the day our first set of equipment and lab supplies came in: pipettes, glassware, gel rigs, agarose, media, petri plates... and a new prof in Biology was generous enough to let us use his then-empty lab, since he had no students at the time. Later we migrated up to the bacterial genetics lab that one of the three of us was working in that summer, which in turn led to that prof getting interested in iGEM and becoming one of our faculty advisors.)

At some point Andre likened our efforts to get the team going to trying to erect a tent from the inside: having to hold up the sides and establish the structure, until hopefully it gets stable enough that you can let go and get out of it without it falling down on you.

By spring 2008 the three of us had all graduated, but I was still in Waterloo doing research, and ended up holding the tent up myself. Without the other two equally committed members to rely on and to share the workload with, I gained a new perspective on developing the team. And being the last remaining member of that trio of insanity, the issue of how to build the team into one that would be sustainable long-term loomed huge in my mind: at that point there was no one else I could have handed things off to, and the situation wasn't helped by Waterloo's co-op program, in which students alternate work and study each term (nor the fact that the most knowledgeable/experienced students are generally the ones who are about to graduate). So the focus shifted onto recruitment, as well as training and integrating new members, with the hope that some of them would stick around and take on leadership roles themselves.

And it's a very tricky thing, finding that perfect combination: enough interest in the iGEM competition itself; enough technical background to be able to contribute immediately (or enough desire to learn the necessary background independently); enough time/energy to put into the team, on top of coursework or work hours; enough terms remaining in their degree that they'll be around to put the benefit of their iGEM experience back into the team; enough of a sense of the big picture that they recognize the need to groom others to eventually fill the vacuum they'll leave when they graduate. Anyone with some subset of these things can make a hugely valuable contribution to the team, but it's those few with just the right combination who will be the ones making the team successful in the long term.

Despite how jaded I quickly became about the vast majority of students who get involved solely to gain some lab experience or a line on their CV/resume -- into whom we'd pour substantial time and effort and resources, only for them to disappear come midterm season (perfectly understandable, but still disappointing and frustrating) -- there was always something about the beginning of each term that got me excited and filled me with optimism. So much promise and potential. Of course, then midterms would hit, people would disappear, and I'd feel like we were back where we started and that I'd been delusional in thinking that this would be the best term yet. But looking back, it was never delusion: each term was indeed better than the last, and, one by one, we were indeed gaining people who were in it for the long haul, taking the lead on design, lab, modeling, software and outreach.

Since I first became the last person holding up the tent, I've seen my role as doing whatever was necessary for the team to be as effective as possible. Early on, that meant things like training people in the lab, leading design meetings, and preparing funding proposals. As other members gained experience and took on more responsibility, my role adapted accordingly and became a more high-level team coordination/big-picture guidance sort of deal. Ultimately, I'll know I've been successful once I've made myself completely obsolete.

Last summer I even made run for it, seeing what would happen if I closed my eyes and my ears and left the tent... and most things actually continued to stand up pretty well. (... aside from fundraising... the financial situation gave me a bit of a heart attack when I came back in the fall... and member retention from that term was also quite dismal; both of these things mean the long-term view of the team needs strengthening).

Fast-forward to spring 2010. I've never been so optimistic about the team, and with good reason, it seems. Last week, for instance: I find myself sitting in a design/mathematical modeling meeting with Andre (who returned to Waterloo for grad school) beside me. To my right, the current modeling activities are being explained to the new members of the modeling group. To my left, at the far side of the room, the design team has split into two subgroups, each with a relatively new member explaining the current design to even newer members and guiding them in doing further research. This inexplicably warm, fuzzy feeling hits me. I lean over to Andre: "Hey, look... look around... look at what everyone's doing... and we're not doing *anything*...!"

So we're getting there. I'm really excited about the group we have around this term: two new co-ops who've quickly taken on leadership roles and seem genuinely committed to the team, plus a handful of returning members who are taking the lead on various aspects of the team's activities. A couple of these members have even been thinking longer-term, about the direction of the team, and how to keep it sustainable -- this in particular makes me super happy, since it's one of the hardest things to impart to those who don't really start thinking about it on their own. The one piece that's still kind of missing is fundraising, but if that's the only thing I have to worry about at the moment, that's still pretty awesome in my book.

Partly because this randomly just came to mind and partly because I can't think of a better way to wrap up this insanely long post, I leave you with a video from the 2007 iGEM awards ceremony. The finalists had given their presentations, the judges left to deliberate, teams started going up onto the stage to take photos while they waited, and the following spontaneously ensued:

Release me from your Kung-Fu Grip™.

There are already plenty of dance-floor etiquette guides and Top 10 "Do"s and "Don't"s lists out there, but having just been asked to contribute to another one has put me in a bit of a ranting mode, and I feel like posting this here.

I generally don't turn down dances unless I'm about to literally collapse from exhaustion, but there are a few things that make me not want to dance with a guy (even if it doesn't mean I'll refuse him as a result). Things like rhythm problems and a lot of leading-related issues can get frustrating sometimes, sure, but at the same time, the only way to improve on those things is to practice, which means dancing with as many people as you can. And I've certainly had plenty of fun dancing with complete beginners, so it's really not experience-related things that bother me.

The first two things are unpleasant, but not total deal-breakers. (And since my experience comes from dancing with guys, these are about guys, but they could just as easily apply to girls.)

Smelliness is something I really don't encounter very often, but when I do, I admit I try to avoid dancing with the person. I always feel guilty about it though, especially when I'd otherwise enjoy dances with said person. At the same time, I'm also one of those people who's really sensitive to perfume-y stuff (my biggest fear at a concert is ending up next to someone wearing perfume; I can barely breath, and it really does ruin the entire thing for me x_x), so dousing oneself in cologne is also not the answer. Either way, if I find myself trying to hold my breath (or awkwardly turn my head away) half the time we're dancing, I probably won't want to dance with the guy again any time soon.

We all get sweaty while dancing (if you're not sweaty, you're not dancing hard enough!), but guys who *always* end up with their shirts literally soaking wet should consider bringing as many changes of shirt as they need to make it through the night. I know guys who go through at least three in a night -- and the girls appreciate it! If that's not feasible for whatever reason, or if you simply don't want to, fine, but then don't draw the girl into tight closed position; I sweat enough myself, and don't need my clothes getting completely soaked in one dance, just from being held up against a guy's dripping-wet shirt. That said, even that is (more or less) forgivable... but the thing that really makes me not want to dance with a guy is being dripped on while dancing. Yes, dripped *on*. As in, "Hey, is there a leak in the ceiling?" If, by the end of a dance, shaking your head "no" would shower bystanders in your sweat, you need to invest in a towel and *use it* after each dance.

Now, both of these things have nothing to do with actual dancing, and I've danced with people who I would really like dancing with if not for those issues. So even if they'd make me not want to dance with a guy as much, I don't hold it against him and, in fact, may wish he would address the issue so I could dance with him more. This, however, does not apply my last point:

For me, the biggest no-no by far is hand-squeezing. Step on my feet, crash me into people, elbow me in the face -- whatever; I may not like it, and sure it may mean you need to work on control/attention or something (I know I sure do), but at least it's just an accident. As someone who plays guitar and therefore values her fingers, if a guy won't stop squeezing my hands (or at least make an obvious, significant effort) after I ask him to, I will not dance with him again, nor will I feel guilty about it. There's never any reason to close the thumbs down on a girl's fingers (especially when turning her!), let alone keep a death-grip on her hands the whole time. One could call this an experience-related issue, but unlike those other ways in which a guy can injure a girl, this one is completely within his control, regardless of what the girl or anyone else on the floor is doing. And unlike other aspects of rough leading, this one requires no feedback from your partner in order to fix it, so there's no excuse for doing it consistently. Honestly, if all you can do while concentrating on not crushing a girl's hands is the basic step and a right-hand turn, that's all you *should* be doing until you don't need to think about it anymore. I'll take a simple dance over injured fingers any day.

Unrequited dance (cont'd.)

So I pondered some time ago about the symmetry of partner dances and whether there can be a great disparity between how each partner perceives a dance in terms of enjoyment and (of more interest to me) connection/chemistry.

It seems that quite significant a disparity is possible. I find this unfortunate.

In the case where partner A experiences something in the dance that partner B doesn't, I have to wonder whether it could indeed be connection/chemistry at all that A feels, as opposed to enjoyment of another sort.

Not to suggest that I haven't been partner A (I certainly have, many times, at least with respect to general enjoyment), but there's something that bothers me about the idea of deriving enjoyment from a dance in the absence of chemistry with one's partner, especially if it's significantly asymmetrical. A very specific analogy comes to mind, but maybe I'll leave that for another time... In the meantime, I have more to ponder...