Sometimes I read something and think, “Boy, that’s brilliant! I wish I had said that!” Well, the following set of rules is one of those instances.
The list is attributed to Bill Gates, dished out at a speech given to a high school graduating class, but I don’t know if he came up with it or if he had heard it from somewhere else. In any case, it’s a great set of rules … ones that we should all share with our kids.
He also talked about how the feel-good, politically correct teaching they learned about has created a complete generation of kids with no concept of reality and how this taught concept has set them up for failure in the real world.
Here goes, along with some of my own comments:
RULE 1 – Life is not fair – get used to it.
RULE 2 – The world won’t care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something before you feel good about yourself.
RULE 3 – You will not make 40 thousand dollars a year right out of high school. And you won’t be a company vice-president with a car phone, until you earn both. And there’s also no such thing as the “perfect” job. All jobs get old after awhile … that’s why they pay you instead of the other way around.
RULE 4 – If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss. He doesn’t have tenure. And you won’t go to the cafeteria if you’re late … you’ll get fired.
RULE 5 – Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your grandparents had a different word for burger flipping – they called it opportunity.
RULE 6 – If you mess up, it’s not your parents’ fault — so don’t whine about your mistakes but learn from them.
RULE 7 – Before you were born, your parents weren’t as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you are. So, before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parent’s generation, try delousing the closet in your own room.
RULE 8 – Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life has not. In some schools, they have abolished failing grades and they’ll give you as many times as you want to get the right answer. This doesn’t bear the slightest resemblance to anything in real life.
RULE 9 – Life is not divided into semesters. You don’t get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you find yourself. Do that on your own time.
RULE 10 – Television is not real life. In real life people, actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to work.
RULE 11 – Be nice to nerds. Chances are, you’ll end up working for one.
