SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Not sure how legit this is, I got if from a friend's post on FB. Whether Bill Gates actually said them or not, I feel they are very valid!

Rule 1: Life is not fair - get used to it!

Rule 2: The world doesn'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.

Love these rules.

They are attributed to 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. I think Gates used them in a graduation speech somewhere.

I think there are 50, but could only find a few more on the internet:

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.

If it is from Gates, then he sure knows how to preach from the top of the Ivory tower.

He made billions largely on the advice and help and good fortune brought to him by others, and his friends (Jobs, et al).

He is truly the man in the right place at the right time with some great ideas.

But him preaching at kids like this? It's like Noriega telling us how you can't expect to rule 3rd world nation just because you have a shitload of guns and troops.

If anything, Gates is the epitome of a charmed life with incredible good fortune and luck combined with his ideas and intelligence.

There are far greater minds than his that sweep the back alleys today because life wasn't on their side, and they didn't have the connections.

The advice is great. But Gates saying it? Hard to believe.

Here is a real quote from Gates that shows his (lack of) vision.

"640K is all you will ever need".

Yep, really saw the future of computing and technology there. If it weren't for all the people that supported him, he'd be an also-ran instead of a multi-billionaire.

-D

[This message edited by Defiance at 6:27 PM, September 7th (Tuesday)]

"640K is all you will ever need"

Um, yeah.

I think I read this really wasn't Gates... nonetheless, it's great advice and I made the banana bunch read it.

WB,

Well, you may be right about that one. I will have to retract...

But he was nowhere near the visionary and wise sage that he pretends to be with that list of advice.

I don't hate the guy, but I also realize he was a very talented opportunist, with many great friends and helpers with great minds, who made out like gold.

-D

I agree D but... And this is a big but... Gates saw opportunity and seized it... Like so many I've seen in oil and gas...

Some get it, some don't and the rest end up being very well payed drones...

As #1 rule says... Life ain't fair...

WB

"640K is all you will ever need".

There is a quote he will never live down!!!

But I do have to disagree with you on some levels. Bill Gates did not live a charmed life thru high school. He was the nerd. He fought a lot with his mother. He was not coddled. He was not accepted by his peers. He did not do well in HS and I think flunked out of college. He could have became a bum drug addict and blamed his parents for everything. But he did not. He was a geek with a quest for knowledge and then found the right thing in the right place at the right time. I gotta respect him for that.

At the same time, I curse MS almost everyday. I used to curse Bill Gates everyday, but then he stepped down from the day-to-day operation of MS and so it no longer made sense to curse him. But I do curse his business model of "sustained obsolescence" and the crap buggy OS that his company continues to put out.

So unlike you, I hate the bastard. But I do respect the hell out of him!!

These rules are witty and true, but at the same time, what a sad commentary on the environment the American kids are raised in.

As for Bill Gates, he's only doing what he always has - capitalizing on someone else's work...

Btw, I'm an IT professional and I don't do "windows" - it's unix and MacOS for me, always has been always will be... and I keep my kids in a foreign school system too

it's unix and MacOS for me, always has been always will be... and I keep my kids in a foreign school system too

I LOVE YOU MAN!!!

Nothing like a little cynicism in the morning.

Whoever said it doesn't know fuck-all about how I raise my kids & what lessons they have or have not learned.