People talk about the eye contact thing, but name usage is way harder for me. I can just look at someone’s eyebrows, but I can’t pull off pet names for people I don’t know very well.

I feel like I’m either in trouble or the person talking to me wants to sell me something or seduce me when someone calls me by my name, so I don’t want other people to feel like that. It also always feels forced if I just say their name when they say mine, like I didn’t think of it on my own.

It’s getting tough because I just started teaching and I can tell that everything would be easier if I indicated students by name instead of by eye contact, but I can’t manage to get names out fast enough for them to be helpful.