[Callers] Preparing via Post Mortem

The topic of preparing to call a program sent me off on a tangent here, hence the different title. One of the best pieces of advice I got early in my dance calling career was how to organize my cards, including the idea of making notes every time I called that dance. It got me used to analyzing the dance that night, while it was fresh in my head, to see where I might have been clearer in my teaching (or where I went wrong, if you want to think that way). Then, before calling that dance again, I could benefit from my hard-won experience in the form of my notes on the backs of my cards. I also notice that the tone of these notes changed over time, so on some of my very earliest notes I was very frustrated with those dancers who were ** intentionally ** mishearing my very clear and concise instructions (wink). Somehow, as I gained experience, these same dancers got better and better. It was very enlightening how this process worked. I also luckily received the advice to publicly accept the blame for any problems that occured, even if I thought the problem lay elsewhere. These days, any problems are easy to own, as I'm much more sure of the things I did to cause the problems and much more adept at correcting them smoothly and quickly. Life is good. I concur with practicing to tapes, and to practicing while walking, and while driving, and to visualizing and scripting the walkthroughs, though I may not actually write down the script. Jerome