I'm not particularly nervous because I'm confident in my knowledge about and abilities to present the material. I have enough time to do the research needed to fully prepare myself - my nervousness in educational settings is generally stemmed from feeling ill-prepared and I won't be in this case.
I'm a Religious Studies major, which is a blanket term for a combined study of religion, folklore and mythology, humanities, philosophy and linguistics. At the moment I focus on Abrahamic religions and am studying Hebrew, Greek and Ugaritic texts. I intend to get a Ph.D by which time I'll have studied a wider array of world religions.
The audience will be mostly adults, haha. It's a Free School in the anarchist sense - it's essentially a nonprofit developed, organized and run by college students and other adults enveloped in academia. A lecture night is similar to a humanities themed TEDtalk.
I was asked to speak either to religion or philosophy, so I'm bridging the gap and speaking of religion in the context of antinatalism, a philosophy to which I subscribe. When I discuss religion in academic settings it's more about providing historical and cultural contexts and not so much about stating my position on the existence of deities. I am firm in my atheism but religion is about more than separating believers from nonbelievers.
I absolutely said yes! It was my favorite professor/adviser whom I greatly respect that asked me, so I was extremely honored and flattered.