The author has written about his journey to Inner Mongolia, where he helped university students mount a production of a Shakespeare play, which led him to reflect on an earlier, perhaps even more improbable journey. He then describes his growth from a student with dyslexia into a teacher, and principal as the result of guidance and encouragement from a caring teacher. He remarks that by the time he entered his own teaching career, he was heavily in debt to pay back the kindness and encouragement that had saved his own school experience, and considers his teaching career an opportunity to repay that debt.