This essay concerns on how my novel The Teacher was influenced by the Masters course I completed in Creative Writing at Linnaeus University (2012 – 2014). Basically, The Teacher is about a love affair between a teacher and a student. With an intertextual, comparative and structurally inspired method I examine the process of writing my text. I also examine how my work relates to the great changes of the Swedish school system in the early 1990:s: deregulation, decentralisation and management by objectives. These changes are satirised in the novel. The essay also deals the role of the city in its time, the school in its town, contemporary literary texts with corresponding thematic, the moral values in their time and overall existential questions about responsibility, guilt, acceptance, non-judgmental attitudes, forgiveness and being in the present moment. The examining part of the essay shows how these premises get a concrete expression in the main conflict, main theme, characterization, narrative and stylistic choices. The essay clarifies the satirical point of view that turns The Teacher into an ironical reflection on the Swedish school system after the so-called “kommunaliseringen” (communities taking over from the state). The essay also clarifies how grown ups abdicate from responsibility in the Swedish society and how people judge each other and cling to roles. For that reason The Teacher is relevant within its time but also and even more since it is about recurring existential questions about responsibility and non-judgmental attitudes.