I used to wake up in the middle of the night having dreams that I had not finished some of my homework. I still have these nightmares even now. I could see a therapist about these dreams, but I already know their origins. When I was growing up, I was always walking the line between trying to be normal and figuring out how to exist with glasses, and the thought in the back of my mind was, “You cannot fail." Even as I am in retirement, I find it difficult to accept that I cannot be everything that I was. Hopefully in sharing my story, it can inspire students and others to persevere, like I learned to do. Sometimes I wake up and think about my life and my accomplishments. Other days I wonder did I really even do some of the things I recall. The pressure to remember my accomplishments is what causes me to press forward in capturing details for this book. Ultimately, what I have become is not something that I did by myself. First, I had the grace of God and second, I had interactions with people who I met along this journey. At the end of each chapter of this book I have created a section called Voices from the Journey. These voices are the reflections of students, friends and colleagues. This book could not have been written without the contributions from a number of people --Angela Brathwaitewho was one of my former students, took the draft of my plain historical document and turned the draft into a story and throughout this process hopefully made me a better writer.