I went to a talk by a grad student historian who studied how mathematical ideas evolved in Europe roughly 1600-1900. He started his talk by quickly drawing a damn near photorealistic map of Europe on the chalk board. Very impressive way to start a talk and make it memorable. It really impressed on me how lecturing can be developed like a performing art.

I never leveled up my chalkboard skills, but there were definitely times when I distracted myself from proofs that wouldn’t work by learning how to make beautiful diagrams in latex + tikz. Beyond improving the presentation it’s a nice way to get a break from the words and symbols part of the work and blow off some steam.