Serious introspective blog posting OMG barf

Today's snapshot: down by the Museum Campus. Again with the damn lake. You may see a lot of it this month. Mmmm. Pretty sunrise.

So, I made a dumb mistake in class today. Really dumb, truth be told. It was a simple transposition of masculine and feminine, which ends up changing the meaning of the word in question. And it was a little thing, but I felt like a total idiot.

I am ashamed of what I do. I feel like a poser. Like a fraud. I feel guilty for teaching students a language which isn't my native language. There are millions upon millions of native speakers out there, right now, probably much more knowledgeable than I. Where does this guera get off trying to pretend she knows more than she does?

Whenever someone presses me to talk to a native speaker, or even to a second-generation speaker, I always feel like an idiot. Like I'm going to sound stupid. Like I won't know enough. Like my vocabulary won't be as large, or I'll sound too "textbook" and not "natural" enough. I feel like they're always going to laugh at me. How can I ever be good enough?

I go out of my way to avoid the maintenance crew at work. I'm afraid they'll all make fun of my accent. Last weekend, at a birthday party, I purposely snubbed someone's abuelita because I didn't want her to think I was trying to be something that I'm not. It's gotten to the point that I feel like I look dumber for avoiding speaking than I would for just coming out and talking.

This is a very distilled version of something that's been bothering me for months, but it's all I can manage tonight. I think it all goes back to self-confidence. I have none. I feel like an idiot, and I wish I could just like who I am, cool or uncool. I need to embrace my inner white girl, in all her geekdom. I'm just not quite there yet.