Three years ago, universities adopted a new policy concerning people with emotional support animals since a new study demonstrated that some university students had stress levels which were too high to even attend their classes. So much so that the percentage of people attending university dropped in the country. Moreover, to boost the chances of students succeeding and decreasing their stress levels, they implemented another policy concerning plants.
It's a Wednesday morning and Christian is waiting for his first course of his senior year of university. While waiting, he is petting his dog, Zeena, when he crosses path with an old friend. They greet each other and start to catch up on the last few years they have not seen each other. They are high school friends but have lost contact for a while. Christian McAdams and Christine McAdams became good friends since they found out they had a similar name and found it funny. Since Christian had spare time before his class, they started to recall their high school days. She was always at the top of the class with remarkable grades, while Christian was around the average closer to the passing grade. While they were talking, a student passed by with their Bernese Mountain dog.
In the depth of their conversation, Christine's curiosity got the best of her, and she asked him how he was able to get in this university considering his grades in high school. Christian never really talked about it to anyone but since he knew Christine, he didn't mind telling her about it.
As he recalls his last year of high school, he tells her the surprise that came with it. It was on a Friday afternoon towards the end of the school year, one of those perfectly warm spring days. Not too hot, not too cold but perfectly balanced between sunny and windy. Christian got called out of Ms. Law's history class. On his way to the administration office, he kept wondering why he was called out and what he could have done. Before opening the office door, he took a deep breath to calm himself down and with his shaking hand, he opened the door to see a lady at her desk typing something on her computer. She told him to come in and to sit down at the waiting area. He had clammy hands and a dry throat. Every second of his waiting felt like two hours of gym class, which is "his least favourite class in the world". She told him it wouldn't take long and that she had to finish an email. After a few minutes of buildup stress, she finally called him to sit down at her desk. She started by asking him if he knew why he was called out of his class. Christian told her that he had no idea why he was sent to her office so well known to the delinquent students. He thought that the administration lady would offer tutoring to help him get better grades because he thought that they were not good enough for university. To his astonishment, the conversation went in a completely different way. As the anxiety was getting to him and as he was hearing his heartbeat louder and louder, he suddenly heard the word ...SHIP. Christian came back to reality shaking his worried thoughts away and ask the lady if she could repeat herself. She said loud and clear, "YOU GOT A SCHOLARSHIP!". Christian went back to his thoughts but this time they were no longer worried ones but instead they were confusing ones. He snapped back to reality once again and asked himself why HE got it, why HIM, his grades weren't exceptional, and he didn't have any remarkable performance outside of school. However, he put those thoughts away and decided to simply accept that scholarship which was much needed for him to get into a good university.
As he finished telling Christine about how he got to visit the infamous administration office for a very different reason than the other students, Christine didn't question him any further since they both had to go to their next class. They moved along followed by their own emotional support dogs. As she was walking away, Christine hesitated to say something to Christian, but she held back and kept it to herself. She thought why was he chosen? It seemed odd to her because he never showed interest of getting a higher education. Yet, there he was in one of the best universities of the country.
Ten years later, Christian is now a famous thirty-three-year-old CEO of a translation firm. He's sitting in his office, with his new puppy, Blue, right beside him, laying in his comfortable little cushion, in a deep sleep. Christian is looking out his curtain wall on the last floor of his building. As he's sipping on a glass of scotch, he reflects on his career journey. He remembers a few years back how he got a translation job for a film produced by an unknown director and how he didn't think much of it, but little did he know that this job would translate his life into one of his wildest dreams. That film became a huge hit and since he translated it, he became famous in the industry of translation and then Christian kept receiving proposal after proposal for any kind of translations job. Since he just started his own firm at the time, he accepted most of the proposals and his popularity skyrocketed which set him up on the map. The young CEO then thought of the thing that started it all and that is the scholarship he got in high school. If it wasn't for that scholarship, he wouldn't be where he is today because it gave him motivation throughout all his years of university. He started to work harder since he didn't want to waste this opportunity as he knew that if he didn't get it, he would have continued with his bad study habits and continued to get low grades.
What Christian didn't know way back in high school was that the administrative person had made a mistake. She would learn this information later in her life, but at the time of her error, she had undiagnosed dyslexia which led to her misreading the name of the scholarship winner. The real winner was Christine McAdams, Christian McAdams' old friend. Till this day, neither Christian nor Christine knows about this blunder.
