After all that has been said, we get to this final chapter. By now, if you have read the book in detail, you know some of the strategies that can help make lectures successful and effective. However, there is much more to lecturing than what can be covered in any book. Lecturing requires persistence to keep on trying even after numerous failures. It requires practice and experience, just as practice and experience are required in order to become a competent artist. And finally, it requires keeping in mind why you are lecturing and why you are there. Just as a doctor is often faced with life and death questions regarding patients, so is a lecturer often faced with life altering questions regarding the audience. As a result, lecturers need to be active in what they do and how they lecture. They must avoid fear of trying new things and avoid getting stuck in lecturing local minima where their performance, while okay, could be substantially improved through further experiment and effort. In the next few sections, we will take a closer look at these and other general issues.

BE PERSISTENT

The first chapter of any success story is often about failure. The first time that you give a lecture, the first time that you try something new, do not expect immediate success. While you should learn from your mistakes, do not be disappointed by them.