Dear students,

 Let’s switch to first person. Hi, my name is Mike Mena (pronounced ‘meh-nah’). You can call me Mike. The title most meaningful to me is ‘teacher.’ But, to be perceived as a ‘teacher,’ well, that must be earned.

The ‘maestro’ in MaestroMikeMena.com has a double meaning. To my musician ears, maestro might mean ‘conductor,’ and it can be applied to any person who gets up to direct what is going on. To my Mexican American ears, capital ‘m’ Maestro primarily means ‘teacher,’ a title that must be earned and maintained. A title that can be revoked.

I had a difficult time in graduate school, on my best days I felt ‘average,’ but most days I felt on the verge of tears. I was told:

i have imposter syndrome.

Those were not my words. It’s what I was told.

I was trained to feel like an imposter. My imposter training was relentless: from explicit attacks, to barely perceivable exclusions. But, they added up, the tiny moments. They build, they built. Eventually, all those tiny moments of feeling bad began to make sense:

i’m not as smart. i should quit. i want to go home.

I knew each moment wasn’t my fault. But, I was told otherwise:

i have imposter syndrome.

But, those were not my words. Never again.

i have imposter syndrome.

My imposter training was all about ‘academic language,’ the linguistic register that produces the space we call the school, the campus, and the academy. I arrived to graduate school without ‘academic language,’ or, at least, I was continually positioned to appear so. What I discovered is my academic language does not sound like what is expected in the classroom. I did not speak with jargon, with technical flourishes, nor did I lace my speech with common academic phrases. But to be clear, academic language has nothing to do with words, but social positioning. And, crucially, it had to do with the confidence to assert an idea so forcefully that it sounded ‘right’—it felt ‘right.’

I founded the YouTube channel, The Social Life of Language because I wanted to learn from someone like me: a person of color that sounded like me.