In this essay, I reflexively narrate my personal travails as a Teaching Associate (TA) in a Midwestern US university and, later, an Assistant Professor in the Southern State of Georgia. I argue that, as a foreign-born TA and, later, an Assistant Professor, I carry extra layers of identity markers that distinguish me from the homegrown professor. Thus, the masked and the overt demands by the hegemonic institutional forces for conformity to the Anglo-American speech forms and narratives suppress those unique identity markers. So as not to create tension and friction in the classroom, it is challenging not to be seduced to veil those unique identity markers in the cross-cultural intersections of pedagogy. However, unlike the homegrown professor on familiar terrains, by concealing those unique identity markers about myself, my true self is veiled from students and I become a mystery to them in the ensuing pedagogical encounter. With this understanding, I have always positioned my true self as rhetorical act of anchoring that demystifies the strange and invites the native to the never-ending dialogue of discovery.