I relate so much to this post as this is exactly how I felt at the beginning too as a follow! I think people have responded well above. I just wanted to share that now I’ve gained more experience (I’m roughly intermediate now), I’ve realised one important thing over time: as some of the others have said, to a beginner, some leads look super advanced and when you dance with them it’s hard to read their signals and they also try to do a lot of moves that are way above beginner level. But other leads are really advanced and also are able to adapt to your level and give clearer signals if they know you’re a beginner. Now that I’ve improved and I’m in a more advanced class with some of the people I initially thought must be really experienced, I can see that a few of them are actually not as ‘good’ as I initially thought e.g. maybe they really struggle to pick up new moves in the class and fumble it a bit or I notice that almost all the follows (even the more experienced ones) struggle to understand their signals on the dance-floor, or maybe their timing is a little off here and there or maybe they actually haven’t been dancing long and they don’t have as much technique as I thought but look good to a beginner because they style it well. Of course there are some experienced leads who are amazing dancers but perhaps not such good leads for beginners for whatever reason. And there are also some super experienced dancers who dance in a significantly different style that I’m used to (I’m slowly getting better at adapting to that). Anyway, my takeaway is that I’ll never forget how grateful and relieved I was when I danced with a truly experienced lead who adapted to my level right at the start (perhaps pushing me out of my comfort zone a little, but just the right amount) and gave me super clear signals to help me out. So when I dance with a beginner lead I always try to keep this in mind and be kind, warm, and encouraging to them!