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The Great Olaf
The Great Olaf
Thomas arrives to his house, when he passes the front door, he sees, two envelopes with his name on them. He grabs the letters, the first one that he turns over, is from Stanford, astonished, he rips the envelope. Since his last year of high school, Thomas has been the best student, with the best grades, perfect attendance, and as simple as that he is a disciplined person. Through out all his life, he has been wishing to enter one of the best colleges in the US, which is Stanford University. This university is ranked between the 10 best universities in the US. As he starts reading the letter he finds out that he was invited to take the exam before, all the others, since Stanford was interested in a student with his profile. The due date to take the exam is a week from now, November the 9th.
He realizes that he had a very short time to prepare for the exam. The same day he starts to prepare. The topics that the exam would cover, where written in the last paragraph of the letter. There where 10 topics in the exam and he already know 7 of them. He starts to feel really confident in himself and those 7 topics, he doesn´t consider them important so he just starts preparing only for the 3 topics that where left. He goes to library to rent some books that will help him study. During the weakened he spends hours reading and making summaries. His friends start asking for him, since they didn´t know where he was, or what was he doing. His friends where trying to convince him to go out with them, so they could celebrate the great news from Stanford. It was a really hard decision, but eventually his decision is to stay home studying.
The day of the exam just arrived. Thomas is waiting anciently to take the test. When he arrives to the classroom where the exam is going to take place, Thomas feels prepared, and he is ready to take the exam. After the hours passed Thomas finished the exam, and leaves the room thinking about how hard the exam was. When he arrives home his mother asks him, ¨How did it go?¨ Thomas not knowing what to say, he just answered ¨I don´t know, I just know it was the hardest exam I have taken, but I could answer everything.
His friends came by his house, and told him, to go out since, he already had taken the test and he could only wait for the results, “there is nothing you can do”, they said to him. As the Friday night was passing by, at the nightclub, Thomas friends could feel, that Thomas was acting strange, he was not enjoying the night.
Monday morning Thomas receives an email from Stanford University. He didn’t know what to expect but even though he opens it. As he reads the first sentence, he notices he didn’t pass the exam, He didn’t want to continue reading the letter, but in the end Stanford gives him another chance to take the test. He gets depressed but he knows that he needs to start a new page.
Thomas writes the day of the exam in the calendar and starts counting the days, its exactly two weeks from now. He decides to take tutoring class with Stanford teachers. The day has arrived and he is ready to take test for the second time. Leaving the classroom, he feels a little better than the last time and he is waiting nervously for the results. The results came and he didn’t pass the test.
Thomas feeling desperate, asks his mother for advice, his mother tells him, that a friend of hers know a sorcerer that helps people pass the admission exams. When he meets the sorcerer, the sorcerer with the name Olaf, tells him, “Lay down my friend” Thomas confused, laid down, following the instructions Olaf gives him. Thomas just stays in the floor, and hears, Olaf reciting words, and sentences, he was trying to understand, but Olaf was murmuring. After what felt like an eternity to Thomas, Olaf stops, and tells him, he is ready to go. He is shocked, he feels normal. When he has the test in his hands, he starts answering quickly without reading the questions, he doesn’t know what was happening to him but he knew that ever Olaf made to him, was working. He leaves the room with a smile in his face.
The next Monday he receives an email. He passes the exam.
This Story is written by: Ana Karen Fernández and Marian Hinojosa
