"I'm so nervous! There are so many people in the audience! You must be really nervous!" said the Associate Dean who was about to introduce my Breakfast Lecture. The intended audience was donors and potential donors to the School of Physical Sciences. The Dean usually introduced the talks, but he was out of town.
I sympathized with the Associate Dean, but I wanted to spend the few remaining minutes before my talk mentally preparing myself. That usually meant clearing my mind, taking slow deep breaths, and focusing on the topic of my talk and the audience. I didn't want to be distracted.
But the flustered Associate Dean continued to tell me how nervous he was, and he seemed to want me to comfort him.
"You'll do fine. Don't worry about it," I told him in as gentle a voice as I could muster.
"You must be even more anxious than I am. Aren't you nervous?" he asked.
"No, not really. I've given many talks. Take deep breaths," I advised him.
When he persisted, I pointed out that I needed to spend the remaining minutes focusing on my talk.
Surely he should have known that letting a speaker think about their talk is better than telling them how nervous both he and they were?
A few years later I traveled to give a named lecture intended for the general public. When I woke up in the hotel room on the morning of the talk, my stomach hurt. I soon realized I had food poisoning (or some other extreme gastrointestinal problem) from a restaurant meal the night before.
I wasn't sure I would be able to give my talk without running to the toilet every five minutes. This time, I really was anxious.
As we stood on the high stage in front of the large audience, the professor who was about to introduce my talk awkwardly asked me for my preferred pronouns.
Surprised by the question, I was flustered and didn't know how to respond. I sputtered something about not being a fan of using gendered pronouns, and that I try to avoid them.
He replied that in that case, he'd just use "they" and "them" to refer to me.
Given how uncomfortable the conversation felt to me, I couldn't imagine that he'd do it in a way that would sound natural and not weird.
I hurriedly added, "My preferred pronouns are `Alice' and `Professor Silverberg'. If you need to use more than that, please say `she'."
After I had a moment to think, I added, "Could you just read the bio I supplied?" (The bio had used "she", so if he had read it, he shouldn't have needed to ask me for my pronouns.)
No, he didn't want to just read the bio. He had gone on the Internet and was pleased that he had found some interesting tidbits that he wanted to add.
When people deviate from the bio (especially by finding random stuff on the Internet), they usually get things wrong. I then have to make the mental effort to decide what to let slide, and what I need to correct before I begin the intended talk. So much for my carefully-laid plans for how to start the talk.
The introduction to my talk took so long that toward the end of the allotted time for the talk I had to make a split-second decision on which slides to skip. I didn't get to any of the "life advice" that I had recently been including in my talks. (If I had a do-over I would include the advice and leave out some of the mathematical details. The "human interest" parts of a math talk are usually more memorable than the mathematics, and the life advice seems both more necessary and more appreciated in recent years.)
You'll be pleased to know that I managed to complete the talk without running to the restroom screaming. I did half-jokingly warn the audience that I might do so; I hope that they found my warning more amusing than disconcerting.