Talking to myself

I'm always worried what I will become when I see my professors that have been doing this for years. I have had professors that walk around with giant red pen stains on their shirts without even realizing it. I have professors that can stand in front of a class and know their subject so well that they can teach the class without notes or anything, but the whole time they are talking, they are staring at the floor and shuffling their feet. I also had a professor that seemed to pick me the entire semester to look at when lecturing. He would basically look at me the entire lecture while there were at least 25 other students in the class. You can understand why this might bother me. I am on the same track to do the same things they do. Right now I can look at people when I am lecturing and engage them, but then I find myself talking as though they already know the stuff I am talking about. That doesn't teach people anything! Then you end up wondering why the high score on an exam is like 65. Well...this whole conversation is spurred by something that happened the other day. I was talking to a professor the other day at a departmental mixer and he said, "Don, I saw you the other day and I was going to ask you a question, but you were talking intently to yourself and I didn't want to bother you." My question was, "was I talking to myself outloud?" His reply was, "yes!" My next question was, "was it here in the building or was it outside in front of other people?" He said, "outside." I was like, great! Perfect. I am walking around outside talking to myself intently. Great. He said, I wouldn't worry about it. Most people in academics are a little eccentric. I was like yeah, but what about the people who aren't in academics that I meet? The I realized that someday, I will probably be in a classroom teaching the floor and then some student will write a blog that will be similar to this one and then the circle of academics will continue.