Alan y yo (yo soy Alan)

Migrants and second-language speakers are incredibly important for reproducing old, rigid, and traditional language norms. There are only so many venues where the English of the Queen is spoken, and one of them is in the classrooms of English Language Learners in fancy British bilingual schools across the world, as well as many other low and middle-income language institutions (sometimes publicly financed) who place an economic bet on assimilation. The same thing happens with the German Language. Not too long ago a teacher corrected one of my friends on the basis of a grammar mistake, yet I knew for a fact that the form she used is slowly becoming the norm in German spoken language. I told the teacher, and he responded laughingly, “Don’t tell her.” I also had two teachers in Berlin who explicitly told us they are not spending too much time teaching us how that particular conjugation is used in everyday life, because they prefer the old one. They eagerly want the old form (the genitive)...

Honestly, I never thought I would ever have anything close to impostor syndrome. But this Semester I did. It all started when I realized that for a couple of my classes, if it were not to be for the EnorMous help I am receiving from preceptors, friends & te ch nology, I would not be able to manage my courseload at all. I also realized the GPA some of friends have is at this point mathematically impossible for me to achieve.  I guess it worsened off when I felt happy about my test score, only to find out it was below the 25th quintile... I still believe it was a pretty good grade, that happened to be below average. But there are also a lot of videos, readings & other things that I am not doing, because I don’t have the energy to do them.  Am I learning? Yes, I think so. Am I learning as much as others? Probably not. “Comparisons are tiresome” said often one of my high school teachers. A better comparison I perform is with myself. Am a better version of myself than a fe...