Bill Gates' rules for Life*

 

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. 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. He doesn't have tenure and will be brutal.

RULE 5

Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your grandparents had a different word for burger flipping at Burger King or McDonalds- 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 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 jobs.

RULE 11

Be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end up working for one.
* I was recently informed that "The list of rules for life you quote from Bill Gates is incorrectly attributed. According to the urban legends website www.snopes.com, this list is the work of Charles J. Sykes, author of the book "Dumbing Down Our Kids: Why American Children Feel Good About Themselves But Can't Read, Write, Or Add".
So here is the correct attribution; however, I must say that imagining Bill Gates standing up in front of a crowd of students and barking these out is eversomuchmore entertaining than imagining Mr. Sykes (whoever that is) doing the same.