Important Life Lessons
Bill Gates recently gave a speech at a High School about 11 things they did not and will not learn in school. He talks about how feel-good, politically correct teachings created a generation of kids with no concept of reality and how this concept set them up for failure in the real world.
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 $60,000 a year right out of high school. You won’t be a vice-president with a car phone until you earn both.
Rule 4 : If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss.
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, ‘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 thought you were. 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 jobs.
Rule 11: Be nice to nerds. Chances are you’ll end up working for one.
What next?
Labels:
motivational
27 Comments:
i love rule 7........
Hells yeah! That's what I'm talkin bout.
I'd like to add an 11 B ... If you are a nerd, be ready to shine and lead. Just knowing everything isn't going to make people hand you the position of authority. You still have to be ready to take it.
honestly, these lessons sound like the ones of a cynical 45-year old who hates anything life-related...
But everyone should live after their own principles ;)
Finally. Maybe Bill Gates should run for President.
yeah. only super awesome vice presidents get to have antiques as nice as the 'car phone.'
i don't know how "recent" this speech was. =/
Definitely love Rule #11! This list is very well done.
Flipping burgers DOES suck--you make crap money working for a cheap franchise owner who probably uses this same list of lame advice to justify paying you crap wages. The only advice I would take from Bill Gates is how to negotiate a compensation contract, because with his $38 billion, he certainly knows how to do that.
nice blog ;)
This is a great speech, but it wasn't given by Bill Gates. Though it has been spread around the internet since the mid to late 90's.
These are words to live by, kids.
Bill Gates was an opportunist who used everybody else's hard work to gain more money and power than any one person should have. And now he has delusions that what he has say is of any real substance.
Great rules. That one anonymous poster sounds like a typical 15 year old kid who hates anything reminding him of his own naivety, but whose judging?
Firstly, this thing is like 15 years old...rule 3's car phone is a dead give away.
Secondly, I think it is as sad as I did when my mother showed it to me, grinning and telling me to read and take it on board back then.
...back then I was 22, lost and vulnerable.
...now I am 37, wife & 3 kids and loving life.
This may be how life is in the US, but some other parts of the world actually have nice people and fun in life.
...Gates is a dick!
Nice that is a good one but not the best. I love the brutal truth of Rule #4. It is just plain true. Most boss aren't as simple as we thought out to be in the real world.
This sounds bogus The poster says this was from a recent commencement speech. No one has referred to mobile phones as 'car phones' since the '90s.
The list is interesting nonetheless, but folks posting on the web need to provide a reference when they make such claims. (or didn't we learn anything in High School)
http://www.snopes.com/language/document/liferule.asp
Bill Gates is a scumbag..
"honestly, these lessons sound like the ones of a cynical 45-year old who hates anything life-related...
But everyone should live after their own principles ;)"
Yes, I agree... nothing is more important then individuality and imagination.. but he is a soul parasite trying to get people to abandon all sense of hope.
Awww... too bad this is false. These quotes do not come from Bill Gates.
Check out the facts, here.
Troy
Not bad, but not entirely true. Attitudes change with every generation, ideas evolve and culture shifts, sometimes for better sometimes for worse. It's important to work, but that doesn't mean you have to flip burgers. Oppertunities can come, or you can force them to happen. Your job is a big part of your life, always work towards making sure it's an enjoyable part of it.
Life IS hard work...
But the other choice is no prize either.
And at one time flipping burgers would allow one to at least buy and own a car AND pay cheap rent.
Try doing that with the "free market wages"from McD. Wal-Greed and others.
Doesn't matter now anyway...
We have entered the twilight years of the Republic(democracy is been gone for a decade or two)and America's gone FUBAR and the money will be worthless in the next decade or two....
Have a NICE day!!!
This is a pretty well-known Internet HOAX. Bill Gates never said any of this. This is actually a speech given by ultraconservative radio personality and writer Charlie Sykes.
Windows still sucks
TRUE THAT!!! I was the nerdy girl that got made fun of-now I make loads of cash and I`m HOT. HA!
Rule #12...GOD BLESS AMERICA!!!
now let's go kick some communist butt!
I have a nephew who works for Burger King. He works very hard and is timely. His is one of their best workers.
He make .20 cents more per hour then the other average kids because he is such a hard worker. Some day he can write that on a resume and the job market will open right up.
This isn't even real:
http://www.snopes.com/language/document/liferule.asp
Also, Gates' life and introduction to business couldn't be any more opposite from the "tough love/hard work" ethos espoused here.
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