Brother kcir, while I respect your opinion, I have to say I take some offense from it. I understand the importance of conferring a degree in the utmost seriousness and did so during the ceremony. I was making light of my nervousness, which is brought on by those who be so critical of someone new trying. It's hypercritical people like yourself that invite those jitters, but for everyone there must be a first time. I'm sure your first time someone as critical as you was there, but held their tongue and were encouraging instead of critical. To me, your opinion of everything being done by "other more experienced brother" is the exact thing that keeps our numbers from growing. So as the "other more experienced brother" continue to diminish due to age, they would not be replentished because young brothers like myself hadn't been given a chance to gain that experience.
Since you really don't know me, you would have a hard time evaluating my skill. My Lodge Sec is the one that checked me out to make sure I was at a level to do the degrees. He was our WM back in '72 and has had his A cert since the 70's. It makes him the senior PM in our district. I dare say his more then competent to determine if I am qualified to confer a degree or not. For I although I went blank, it was a split second and still was unnoticed by the Candidate. After having gained the confidence of having done the first, the second I did without mistake. Practice all you want, it's still nothing like the first time for real.
Yes it is important to have a good degree, but having been one of the people close to the Candidates and having helped them get to those degrees, it meant a lot to them having me do the degrees. So before you knock someone for not being a perfect on conferring their first degree, you should be applauding them for having the courage to take on the challenge of learning it and doing. Someone was encouraging once to you, or else you would have never been given the change. But if you are wanting to keep all the rituals confined to a few "other more experienced brothers" you excluding of the younger brother is going to leave you without member to keep your Lodge going.