Beixi Li

A year before she met Professor Chu, she had sat in a state of the art auditorium, bored listless when a lanky, stern, young man, whose personality seemed to old for his age, strode onto the platform, and began a speech with a voice that bit each word off dry.

“You know, I was at the best point in my life. I was young and moving faster than ever, climbing the corporate later, doing deals with Martha Stewart and yachts. At my age, I was at the top of the world, and when I told my bosses that I wanted to go back to school and work with students, to advise them on their careers, he said I was crazy—and so did everyone around me.”

From the looks on the faces of those around her, they all thought he was crazy too.

He paced back and forth and held the silence.

“But while some parts of my life were going great, others were going far from great. All that time I had been spending had to come from somewhere, and my family was the vault it came from. But you can’t spend forever without giving back.”

They understood, they had heard this lecture time and again. Balance your life, money isn’t everything, they could repeat the lecture back to you. Already, she could see people drooping into the leather-bound seats, checking cell phones.

A student raised her hand: “Was there one moment that really determined your change of mind?”

He looked down, cleared his throat, walked to the end of the stage and back again. Then he looked straight back at his audience, and said with a steady voice,

 “Yeah. When my wife walked out on me.”