Shortcuts to Life

…and that is linear algebra people. You can leave.” said the professor as he put down his pen and went to his desk to tidy up. Lisa had been meaning to ask a question him but she was sitting at the back of the amphitheatre and could get to his desk in time before the queue started to form. She went to the faculty’s canteen to get some coffee and wait for the professor to leave. After several minutes the middle-aged man finally went out to take some fresh air but he was immediately stopped by a woman- Lisa. After she asked how the equation’s parabola was sketched she was asked a very suprising question: “Would you like to have some coffee Lisa?”. Now Lisa would normally say yes but she had heard that this proffesor in particular had different intentions with female students that he liked. Lisa wasn’t very beautiful but she certainly was above average. “Actually, Sir, I should go I have some essay-writing to do.”.

When Lisa came home she threw herself to bed and napped for some time. When she woke up she heard her roommate coming in. She got up , washed her face and buried herself in physics papers. “Why don’t you come to the party downtown at the club, Lisa?” asked Johnny, her roommate. Johnny had to repeat himself as she didn’t seem to have heard. Lisa turned and strictly said that she had work to do. Johnny wasn’t expecting a “yes” but he wasn’t expecting such a firm response. “Whatever, you never have fun anyways.” said John as he took his leather coat and shut the door strongly.

The night proceeded with half of New York partying and Lisa writing essays and sketching graphs. When it was 4 a.m. Johnny finally came home extremely drunk. Lisa shouted at him for being “utterly irresponsible and a discussion started when Johnny replied “English people and their “fancy accent and assorted vocabulary”. The discussion went on until Johnny asked his roommate what she wanted to be. Lisa had always wanted to be a politician but her mum had forced her to study science. Johnny said “Well, you could have never been a politician you don’t know how the world works.”. This was the last straw for Lisa as she shouted and said that he could never be an artist because he “didn’t have no morals nor enough discipline to be one”. She also mentioned that there she could take the shortcut to success as it was “easy to become a politician”. They both agreed to prove each other wrong.

5 years after they graduated they met each other. They sat down on a bank and started telling each other about their stories. After college, Lisa had persuaded her professor to introduce her to his close friend, the Mayor. This came with a price of course, Lisa was forced to fake flirt with him while they had dinner at an expensive restaurant. When she met the Mayor she was also able to seduce him with her words and became his secretary after only 2 months. When she wasn’t partying she was stalking famous politicians’ sons at parties and talking to them . She had made herself “a hard fish to get” so she was away from conspiracies. When the chance to join the Democrat Party’s campaign team she was already familiar with the environment so she rised quickly to manager in only one and a half year. She started hanging out with the Party’s bureaucrats and made friends with them. “I only made one mistake,” she said “I shared personal secrets and got drunk while I was with them.”. The truth was that she was sacked some months after when she sent an e-mail to the Republicans where she mentioned how they were a certain body part in the back. She now was a secretary, again, at a real estate company.

Johnny told his story after her “dramatic” finish. He had started to work with an intermediate artist in New Jersey. He rised slowly and used his rare opportunities fruitfully in order to accomplish his dream of becoming a good painter. Not only he sold one of his work of art for several thousands he now had a share percent in the most famous art gallery in New Jersey he was married to the daughter of his mentor. He was happy and successful and married whereas Lisa was unhappy and working at a place she hated. Johnny got up and started walking towards the Manhattan Bridge. He stopped after some steps, turned to Lisa and said “There is no shortcut to a place worth going, darling…”.

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