High School Speech - Life Lessons

[MotorTink]

Posted: 12/7/06 at 1:38pm

I got this in my e-mail. I don't know if he really said this, but it's funny anyway. Here goes....

Bill Gates recently gave a speech at a High School about 11 things they did not and will not learn in school.


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.

[MistressoftheHouse]

Posted: 12/7/06 at 2:59pm

Some very good advice - but I did have to chuckle at the mention of having a car phone. How long ago did he give this speech?

Of course, everything he said still holds true but that one was just kind of funny.

[colleen_lee]

Posted: 12/7/06 at 3:16pm

I wish that I could post that in my classroom. Pretty much all of my kids, from Kindergarten all the way up to the middle schoolers, need this beaten over their heads.

[MotorTink]

Posted: 12/7/06 at 3:21pm

My step-mother is a grammer school teacher in Florida...the stories she tells me shock me. It's not really the kids, as much as the parents! Rule 6 stands so true!!

[DayDreamer]

Posted: 12/7/06 at 3:27pm

From 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. (The list has appeared in newspapers, although not necessarily in this book.) Many versions omit the last three rules:

Rule No. 12: Smoking does not make you look cool. It makes you look moronic. Next time you're out cruising, watch an 11-year-old with a butt in his mouth. That's what you look like to anyone over 20. Ditto for "expressing yourself" with purple hair and/or pierced body parts.

Rule No. 13: You are not immortal. (See Rule No. 12.) If you are under the impression that living fast, dying young and leaving a beautiful corpse is romantic, you obviously haven't seen one of your peers at room temperature lately.

Rule No. 14: Enjoy this while you can. Sure parents are a pain, school's a bother, and life is depressing. But someday you'll realize how wonderful it was to be a kid. Maybe you should start now. You're welcome.


My favorite line:
Be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end up working for one.
Snopes link

[MotorTink]

Posted: 12/7/06 at 3:33pm

DD - I love it! Of course #12 was me as an early teen, but thankfully I eventually grew out of that phase!