How do I avoid annoying questions during awkward silences?

[Roch]

So awkward silences are annoying enough. I try to relax during silence, but one common problem I encounter is that people always ask me questions about stuff I don’t want to talk about. That includes questions like what what high school did you go to (I didn’t graduate and I don’t think that’s most people’s business), what year are you in (I’m auditing university courses and I’d rather not talk about that, how many hours do you work, where are you from(I’m always suspicious of people who ask this, are they trying to ask my ethnicity or do they think I talk/act foreign). I guess I can learn a lot from politicians. I like to have anonymous interactions and people always like to talk down to me.  My best real life interactions are when I’m engaged in an interesting conversation that flows well and people don’t even know my name. I don’t know why I don’t like people knowing my name and I know it just makes me look weird. So I tell people my name even though it makes me very uncomfortable. So I often mumble and cringe when I introduce myself to people and I avoid it as long as possible. 

[YaNanNallari]

They talk down to themselves too, you're not the only one. It is a way they are used to behaving. To compare, analyze and such.

[bejapuskas]

The whole thing about „awkward silence“ is very annoying... If one has nothing useful to say, just don't talk right?  But you cannot expect this from all the people around, because this bias is very popular... It is not weird to stay quiet. Sometimes when I am with my friends, we are just quiet for minutes and it doesn't feel awkward at all