Advanced Class report

[drscott]

Tuesday night we went to the first ECR Advanced Class intro night. Dave Decot and Michael Levy did a good job trading off tips, with some APD Plus and a few new Advanced calls. It was nothing like Andy's sink-or-swim methods -- when I took the class about 7 years ago, we plunged right in to Chain Reaction, and I had to quit after contracting the flu about two weeks in. This time, we had 2 squares, about half students, which is not bad; some of my favorite people angeled, including Lou Ceci and allanh, who wrote about it here. We only attracted one student from outside the South Bay / Peninsula, but the rent on the school gym we used is apparently so cheap the class can be small and still break even. There were some breakdowns when Dave or Michael screwed up, but trying to make illegal calls work can be fun.

We already have the Big 5 and Callerlab definition books from my previous try at A, so we're set.

In unfortunate timing news, we'll have left for Ft. Lauderdale the day Andy/otterpop58 visits to call for ECR's dance.

Comments

[tmaher.livejournal.com]

If you haven't seen Ceder's Advanced Definitions, go there now. Best Documentation Ever.

He also gets bonus points for typesetting the hardcopy editions in LaTeX.

[dr-scott.livejournal.com]

Very nice, and terse. As for LaTeX, I barely remember those days. :-)

[fuzzygruf.livejournal.com]

The Advanced list has changed some since you took the class. The up-to-date Callerlab defs are online, so it's worth printing out a new set.

Ceder Chest is probably the best for explanations and diagrams.

Trying to get through Advanced before convention with those instructors is pretty ambitious. Hope it all goes well. I'm looking forward to seeing you Swap Around!

[dr-scott.livejournal.com]

Dear Snarky One:

Okay, I'll waste some trees. The relatively trivial calls they introduced so far haven't changed, but it'd be unwise to rely on old books. I do like the background material in the Big 5 book because it's unlikely to be presented clearly in class.

[orange-groves.livejournal.com]

Love Hate bad instructors challenged squaredancers.

[apparentparadox]

Actually, doing Chain Reaction first off is probably a good thing. It can be a very difficult call, so having lots of practice with it is helpful. The outside person who isn't the one passing through usually forgets to wait to hinge, and that can screw up things if it the center wave was left-handed or if it's called with mini-waves on the outside.

[dr-scott.livejournal.com]

I heard another reason Andy started with that was to weed out people who weren't ready or very serious. It was fine with me, especially since I was younger and still had a functioning brain.

There don't seem to be any really weak students in this group, which is good. The last time ECR did an A class it did not go well.