Shortcut Sam

Shortcut Sam

Fiction

Shortcut Sam tried out for the high school track team.  They had a track with multiple lanes and each lane had a different number.  The track was composed of straight lines and curved lines and wrapped around in a loop.  The route around the outside lane was bigger than the route around the inside lane.

Shortcut Sam started in the outside lane and ended up drifting into the most inside lane into the wrong place.  The coach said you are in the wrong lane and that would disqualify you in an official race but this is just tryouts.

Since you are so fast I think you should race but I need you to go in a straight line.  If you try a shorter distance track then the path is a straight line so you should be able to stay in your lane easier, please try racing from here to there.

So Sam raced on the path the coach told him.  The coach had all the other students race that same distance also.  

The coach said, "Sam, you had the best time, you made the team."  He then told him when the next competitive race against other school teams was.  He told Sam that although you have the best time right now you still have to show up to practices in order to continue to improve before the big race.

Sam said, "I do not need to go to practice.  I had the best time."

The coach said, "You made the best time for now for this school but if you do not continue to practice, the other students who do practice will eventually do better than you and also we do not know if your current time is better than the best current time of students at the other schools, so if you do not show up to practice you can not run in the big race."

Sam replied, "You are just discriminating against me because I am from the inner city."

The day of the big race came and Sam did not show up to a single day of practice but he arrived early for a pre race meeting.

The coach told him you did not show up to a single day of practice and now you want to race.  Sam replied, "I do not need to practice, I am the best and I will prove it right now."

The coach said, "Normally you should not race so soon before the big race because it will tire you but I will time you and if you can run across the same distance as last time faster than every single other student then you can run the race."

Sam said, "I will"

Sam ran and the coach timed him and he got exactly the same time.

The coach said, "Sam, your time is exactly the same as last time."

Sam said, "Last time I ran I was faster than all the other students therefore I am the fastest and you must let me race."

The coach said, "Since all the other students were practicing, the very worst of the other students now has a better time than what your best time was before you started practicing.  You do not have the very best time of all my students, you actually now have the very worst time because you never showed up to practice so you never improved."

Now this was not the only time Sam took a shortcut.  Taking Shortcuts was Shortcut Sam's way of life.

Sam lived in the inner city but bussed to a school in the suburbs.  He was not a good friend to Patient Pat but Patient Pat was a good friend to Shortcut Sam.  But Shortcut Sam always said Patient Pat was mean to him because he was warning him to do things the right way even if it takes longer and is harder work because in the long run you will have better results and not having to fix mistakes later will actually save you time in the long run.

For example Patient Pat tried to explain the importance of trying to learn to do math with a paper or pencil or in his head instead of using a calculator.  But Shortcut Sam called Patient Pat an evil man who was guilty of discriminating against him because he was from the inner city and because of his disability instead of thanking him for his helpful advice and useful warning.

When Shortcut Sam was told he had to do math homework by the math teachers.  He told the math teachers, "No I do not, you are just assigning me homework as a way of discriminating against me because I am from the inner city."

The teachers said, "We are not discriminating against you, all the other students are assigned homework also.  You may think not doing homework is fun but in the long run you will not be able to do math if you do not practice."

Shortcut Sam said, "I do not need to practice the calculator already does math for me."

The teacher said, "You need to practice because if you do not learn enough self control to even study such a simple thing as this, you may take other shortcuts in life that could cause disasters."

Sam said, "I have a disability and if you do not let me use a calculator you are discriminating against me because of my disability and I will sue you."

The teacher said, "You need to take a special test by a qualified specialist to prove you are disabled."

Sam said, "You are just trying to claim I need to take a test to prove I am disabled because you are discriminating against me because I am from the inner city and I will sue you if you make me take the test."

The teacher slammed a calculator down on his desk and said, "Fine, you do not need to take a test to prove you are disabled, but I warn you if you continue taking these short cuts then disaster awaits you."

Sam said, "Disastrous awesomeness like not having to study!"

Years later Sam finally graduated from high school but he got a certificate of completion instead of a high school diploma.

Next Sam enrolled for college classes and paid for it with money from FAFSA

He then said since I am paying them to give me credits I should not have to show up to classes and he did not show up to any classes or take any tests nor did he withdraw from or cancel or drop any classes.

When he tried to enroll the next semester he was denied.  But he said where there is a willingness there's a way and more importantly a shortcut that does not take much strength of will to accomplish.  So he just enrolled in more colleges hoping he could get in anyway even though the FAFSA money did not work right. 

Now Sam started applying for lots of colleges and even though he had a very low GPA compared with other students from his suburban school who could not get into IVY leagues despite their hard work Sam was accepted into multiple IVY league Universities. How did he get into IVY league universities?  His parents never went to college, and he was from the inner city and registered as disabled even though he never proved he had a disability but merely said he did, and these factors could make up for his low grades.  Sam also had another secret, he was lazy, a truly lazy man.  Because Sam was so lazy that made him more similar to your typical person then the rare and exceptional people who tried hard.  This similarity to the common person made him a very persuasive talker who was very charming to your typical lazy person like college admission staff even though hard working people found him not to be charming but obnoxious.

Now the IVY league universities he was accepted into had so much donor money that unlike regular public schools, all students accepted whose parents made less than a certain amount of money get in for free as long as they fill out a FAFSA form.  Now some people make little money because of unfortunate life circumstances beyond their control or because they sacrificed their income and or wealth for a greater good but not Sam's parents. Sam's parents had little money because they, like Sam, were lazy in fact they taught Sam to be a lazy person.

Now there was one catch Sam only had to fill out a FAFSA.  But because his grades were so low he was on academic probation and because he wanted to hide his low grades from when he skipped a whole semester and because he owed debt he did not pay back for not showing up to classes, he could not get FAFSA to get through correctly to get the IVY league universities to consider him qualified for free tuition.

Now as for the debt on the FAFSA due to some special circumstance it was forgiven because things tended to go his way even though he did nothing to earn or merit such good fortune.  But it came with a weird catch that he was not allowed to use FAFSA again for 3 years after it was forgiven.

He told Patient Pat, "This is so unfair I should be allowed to go to college now, for free and not have to pay anything for it.  I do not want to be older than such and such a age when I get my bachelors degree"

Patient Pat said, "You can go to college now you already earn enough money to afford technical college without taking out any loans or getting any grants, scholarships or fellowships and still have money left over for food and rent.  You can also take CLEP classes if you put in the effort to study at an even cheaper price than that.  A credit toward graduation is a credit toward graduation regardless of the source.  With that you can get an associate degree and pay off any college debt you have with the better job you can get with an associate degree.  An associate degree is better than no degree even if it is only halfway toward a bachelor's degree and if you have an associate degree with good grades then you are even better qualified to get into IVY league schools than when you first applied and were already accepted with no previous college degree.  And you might not even have to worry about paying off debt to use the FAFSA to get into the IVY league for free. Did you not just say it was forgiven and all you had to do was wait 3 years then you can use the FAFSA and get into the iVY league for free?  Just be patient and things will work out better then if you take some rash shortcut"

But Shortcut Sam said, "No, I need you to help me write essays for scholarships.  Since I can not get FAFSA money I need scholarships that do not require FAFSA to go to college."

Patient Pat said, "Why should I help you write essays for scholarships for a school that you will never graduate from because you will not study or practice math  in order to pass the math classes necessary for the very specific type of degree you wanted that requires lots of math, even though I told you about other options that require less math, but even those options require more math then you are willing to learn.  You must prove that to me you will not quit before you start like when you ran the race or used a calculator for math that even fourth graders could do on paper or in their head while you were still in high school, not because you were unable to but because you never tried.  You must prove it by studying math with me until you are at least up to fourth grade level without a calculator otherwise you will not be able to pass college remedial math.  I expect you to study 1 hour with me every day, frankly that is not enough time, because there would be 720 hours if you studied an hour a day for 180 days a year for the four years from first, second, third and fourth grade that a regular child would study just by showing up to class every day and doing the work without a calculator not to count any homework outside of class and you want to go to college in less than 120 days from now, which would only give about one sixth that many hours if I merely ask an hour a day from you instead of the full 6 hours to catch up for the time you slacked off with your calculator shortcuts instead of doing real math for all those years of math class."

Shortcut Sam said, "You are discriminating against me because of my disability and because I am from the inner city."

Patient Pat said, "If you were not from the inner city where you were raised by such lazy parents I would not even be willing to talk to such a lazy person as you.  You should be grateful that I offered to teach you math for free instead of charging you many times more than minimum wage which I could and most people who have my level of education if they were willing to even spend the time to teach you at all instead of getting a real job.  As for your disability there are some people who really are disabled but I know you and you are just lazy, you never tried to prove you are disabled, if I saw you trying all those hours and still could not succeed then maybe I would believe you but the only disability you have shown me until you have spent hours trying and failing  is the disability of laziness and pure and simple not trying "

Shortcut Sam he would study and put in less than 20 minutes a week on average, but lied and tried to make it look like he was serious and deceived Patient Pat.

So Patient Pat helped with the scholarship essays because Shortcut Sam was pretending to start to put in the effort.

When Patient Pat found out what Shortcut Sam did he said he would help him with no more essays and warned him that if he actually helped him get into college and graduate but he still did not learn his lesson to work hard instead of taking rash shortcuts disaster would await him.

Shortcut Sam got into college and Patient Pat never talked to him again.

When Shortcut Sam got into his remedial math classes the teachers said, "To truly understand this math you need to practice it on paper or in your head instead of using a calculator otherwise you will not be able to understand these concepts to apply them to more advanced math classes you need to actually use for your major."

But Shortcut Sam said, "If you do not let me use a calculator I will sue you, for discriminating against me because of my disability and because I am from the inner city."

More over Shortcut Sam used his persuasive ability on the administrators who only were greedy and self censored for college tuition money and the short term praise and reward from their fellows about bragging about helping the disabled and disadvantaged people from the inner city even though in the long run such noble deeds as they wanted praise for doing actually were seeds along the path of destruction Patient Pat and Shortcut Sam's gym coach and math teachers had warned about.  Shortcut Sam persuaded the Administrators that not only should he be allowed to use a calculator for remedial math but he should get special privileges to skip entire math courses that other more hard working people who took the same major as him were normally required to take because it was impossible to do advanced math with his disability and to deny him a degree would be failure to accommodate and discrimination.

Now with his degree disaster awaited but unfortunately not for Shortcut Sam but merely for everyone else around him.

Shortcut Sam started getting many jobs in fields where he was the boss of people who knew how to do math even though he did not know how to do basic math himself.  Now these jobs could be done correctly with very little math knowledge.  But these jobs could not be done correctly by someone so lazy as to not be able to bother to learn even a very little bit of math knowledge and who had the kind of personality to always take shortcuts to get around the effort of learning because they would rather stay ignorant.  Shortcut Sam's real problem was not his lack of math knowledge but his bad personality and attitude that led to him never acquiring math knowledge in the first place.  This reckless personality led him to taking dangerous shortcuts in matters other than math.

All Sam had to do for each of these jobs was get people to sign paperwork certifying that they did the different parts of the job correctly such as inspection, or calculations, or the actual physical tasks required for each stage of a job.

All he had to do sometimes was essentially carry a clipboard with forms where people checked off that they did different parts of jobs.  Same did not have to write the forms or choose the forms they were all given to him.  All he had to do was walk up to the person and ask them to sign the form.  Now although sometimes these forms seem rather silly, if someone does not actually do the task on the form and people think they did people could die because they were put there to ensure certain minimum safety requirements were met.

But Sam instead of actually bringing the forms to people checked off the boxes himself, putting a fake signature of someone else's name and then turned the forms in and took off work early.

Sam made lots of money this way and as far as he was concerned no disasters happened to him and Patient Pat was wrong.  Sam went through one high paying administration, business, human resources or management job after another and even got selected and elected for different government jobs and political offices from time to time.  Sam was admired by the ignorant masses, he was famous and successful.  He lived to a ripe old age dying about 10 years later than average only to die of a heart attack which could have been prevented or at least delayed until 20 years later if he was not too lazy to exercise and eat healthy.

Even though Sam could not see that he walked the path of disaster, Patient Pat did.  Patient Pat pointed out Sam's string of failures: the bridge collapses, the skyscraper collapses and the unusually high rate of medical malpractice and patient deaths at different construction projects and hospitals that Sam administered.  There was also the tainted drinking water scandal and the mismanaged and failing infrastructure and public transportation problems when Sam was mayor.

Sam had murdered more than 1 million people throughout a lifetime of negligence but he was hailed a hero and celebrated in public school history books as an outstanding person who achieved great things despite being discriminated against for his disability and inner city upbringing.