This was my second assignment for Professor Thornbury’s ‘Language Analysis’ class for the 2017 summer semester. It was my third manifestation of this assignment. The first two renditions were deemed unacceptable. I was in student hell. And it was not in any way Professor Thornbury’s fault. Professor Thornbury was extremely amenable to my further renditions. The problem was that I hadn’t been in school since the early 80’s, and I was adjusting to a new register of work that included reading, memorizing, and using the materials studied in a follow- up paper, all in a 3 to 4 day turnaround! And it is the turnaround that was killing me. I couldn’t absorb the materials fast enough. I was a 58 year old man in a constant state of cognitive overload. And, further, I was experiencing a kind of depression. When I finally handed this third rendition of a case study, and it was not only accepted, but given high marks, I was ecstatic. But like many things in life, the difficulty of this path was also the genius of this path. In the second half of the summer 2017 season I would have to teach L2 beginners, and now, I had an experience that would help me empathize with my students, brave souls, barley surviving in this harsh New York life. English was their way in. But the skill of speaking and writing is daunting. And, I have no doubt that they were experiencing what I had, except that the consequences of not learning English were much more life altering. And the case study itself took me to further heights of empathy. Tenzin, the subject, of the case study, was a fascinating and enlightening example of the trials and tribulations of coming to this country. New concepts like the Affective Filter, Scaffolding, ZPD, Intelligibility, Interlanguage, Comprehensible Input, were brought into sharp relief by this Case study and my experiences surrounding it.