Message to teenagers

[WRT]

Been emailed this, its apparently Bill Gates Message to Teenagers. Dunno if he did actually write it or not, but there is a lot of wisedom in it, and it echos my own sentiments pretty closely.

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.

Dunno about the last one, but the rest contain some good pointers. If only more people these days would accept responsibility for their actions and mistakes!

[MSTRS]

Good one. Old, but still a good one.

[Sparky Bills]

soo true!!

[Motu]

Trouble is,it's a losing battle.

Life is not fair - being sorted right now.

- wait untill you get a boss - Bosses these days live in fear of their employees...they can take you to the cleaners and it's almost impossible to fire them.

The real world is dissapearing...

[WRT]

Was having the discussion the other day with a mate about getting rid of bad staff. On one hand if you are the employee, then you dont want to be fired because the boss heard you calling him a c#nt behind his back (or because you got drunk at the staff xmas party and called his wife a fat cow or something, or simply because he was having a bad day and decided to take it out on you).

But then if you are the employer, your the one paying the money, its your business, it should be your choice who it is that you have working for you.

Nothing worse than having some useless slackjawed dimwit thats slowing production, pissing off customers and generally fking your shit up, and not being able to kick his dumb arse to the curb.

(Yes, have been in that predicament in the past . . . just incase that all sounded a little bitter.)

[Lou Girardin]

Conversely, you could be the victim of a cowardly manager who blames his staff for his failures. Why should you be unemployed on his whim?
I'd rather make the wanker sweat over it.

[Colapop]

I haven't seen those rules before. Damn true though. I wish I'd had enough sense at school to listen to someone who could've told me those things.

[Motu]

People have so many ''grievances'' these days,they have to make their problems someone elses.We used to be able to walk in and out of jobs at will - being fired or telling your boss to stick it was acceptable behaviour.I've worked for some real arseholes - at one job interview the guy told me ''I'm a cunt of a boss...'',but I still worked for him,and happy I did,even though we had a few barney's.At one place we had 5 guys walk out in a week...I worked there for 8 days,and when I told the guy next to me who had been there only 4 days that I was leaving today,he said he was too.On his morning kick butt rounds I told the boss I was leaving today,the guy in the next bay said he would leave at the end of the week - ''No you're not! You're leaving today like your fucking mate,your pay will be in the office''. No big deal,just part of life.

[WRT]

Conversely, you could be the victim of a cowardly manager who blames his staff for his failures. Why should you be unemployed on his whim?
I'd rather make the wanker sweat over it.

Fk that, I'd go find a job where I'm appreciated, and let the wanker fail of his own accord. You spend enough time at work that you shouldnt be in a job where you have to take someone elses cr@p all day.

Unless of course, your one of the staff members that genuinely are screwing things up for the boss and you just think that the boss is unfairly blaming you. In which case I refer you to my previous comment about people taking responisibility for their own mistakes.

[Colapop]

I've worked for some absolute pricks, but never blamed my failings (I'm no angel) on them. It seems to be the problem these days is that it's never the person who's actually at fault that wants to accept responsibility for it. You see the same thing here when people get pissed about getting pulled up by the law. The f*cking pigs this or that or the f*cking laws... the plain and simple truth is that people nedd to take responsibility for themselves.

I tell my kids the three R's

Responsibility for your actions,
Respect for others, and
Respect for yourself.

[sAsLEX]

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.



Thanks NCEA!

[texmo]

Good read thanks, bling your way for that.

[Jantar]

Stolen from an urban legend, but very appropriate to New Zealand today.

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.

[xwhatsit]

Fuck that's depressing. If somebody had put all that to me while I was still in high school I probably would've given up and gone on the dole straight away.

[sAsLEX]

Sniper is pretty slow today.

[Mekk]

Now you need something for street kids that skip school and don't listen to their parents, let alone a boss.

Personal responsibility unfortunately seems to be optional now. I blame the Americans, and the British. And the war on Iraq, and minimum wage, and cops and parliament and the oppressive authorititave figures in society and....

[Kiwifire72]

Fuck that's depressing. If somebody had put all that to me while I was still in high school I probably would've given up and gone on the dole straight away.
Lol Join the Fire Service
I here at home getting paid to talk with you guys
admitidly am off on sick leave after Heart Bypass'
Rule 10: Television is NOT real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.


but could do with a a latte lol

[Sniper]

Sniper is pretty slow today.

Got things on my mind at the mo. Besides, Im not up at 4am lately :p

[Grub]

This kind of tickled my fancy

Bill Gates recently gave a speech at a High School about 11 things they will not learn in school. He talks about how feel-good, politically correct teachings have created a generation of kids with no concept of reality and how this concept sets 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.

[TOTO]

yea, makes sence.

[Jez]

i like rule 11 ... reminds me of a saying myself and a few friends heard somewhere many moons ago:

"The geek shall inherit the Earth" :msn-wink:

[Sanx]

Ahhh, the lessons learned at the University of Hard Knocks.

As taught by the child of pretty wealthy parents (father a top lawyer in Seattle, mother on the board of various bodies, and maternal grandfather a president of a bank) who went to exclusive prep schools and whose father supplied the start-up capital needed to form Microsoft and ongoing capital when needed for the first few years.

Don't get me wrong; Gates is unusually intelligent and possesses amazing business acumen (and some dubious morals) but a hard life he did not have.

[Tonka]

Ahhh, the lessons learned at the University of Hard Knocks.

As taught by the child of pretty wealthy parents (father a top lawyer in Seattle, mother on the board of various bodies, and maternal grandfather a president of a bank) who went to exclusive prep schools and whose father supplied the start-up capital needed to form Microsoft and ongoing capital when needed for the first few years.

Don't get me wrong; Gates is unusually intelligent and possesses amazing business acumen (and some dubious morals) but a hard life he did not have.

Yeah thats true Sanx (BTW how are you bro?) but I have to admit that Gates list of rules are spot on. The softly-softly PC approach that has pretty much screwed our school system has done nothing to prepare this generation of schoolies of what the real world is like. Only those with a willingness to succeed and further themselves will go on but many will continue to expect 'handouts".

[awayatc]

Rule 12: In real life you can't just make patches all the time to try to cover your fuck ups....

[Subike]

Soft touch brigade spoiling our kids.
Dont forget that these are are future govenment leaders, policemen, and manages......omfg.... Im glad I will be dead by that time.

Wingers, moaners, lazy, selfish, greedy, and expect everything to be done for them. Thats the what a modern school lever is. Having one in my house for 2 months was long enough for me to want to wring its neck. Bates is correct in his 11 points, pity the PC wankers dont believe it.

[awayatc]

And who brought up the present government leaders then who created all this PC bullshit.....?

[James Deuce]

http://www.snopes.com/language/document/liferule.asp

Always consult Snopes before posting Urban Legends.

[Wingnut]

http://www.snopes.com/language/document/liferule.asp

Always consult Snopes before posting Urban Legends.

Its irrelevant who wrote it. Many valid points there for sure.

Some of the next generation need a real wake up call.:bash:

[Zuki Bandit]

That advice is much better than the old speech of "back in my day when we had to walk 10 km to school in the snow with no shoes on"!

[James Deuce]

Its irrelevant who wrote it. Many valid points there for sure.

Some of the next generation need a real wake up call.:bash:

It isn't irrelevant who wrote it at all. Context is everything. Bill Gates has a great deal of "stuff" attributed to him that just isn't anything that he would write or do.

By the way, just so this is straight. The attitude of children (and teenagers are still children irrespective of how they may regard themselves) is entirely the result of their interactions with their parents, teachers, and other role models. The "next" generation is a product of the previous, though there have been a number of societal changes where a variety of agencies have attempted to isolate children from their parents and whanau. From personal experience, those types of things are rather easy to circumvent, provided you aren't a sheep and "accept" that "experts" know better than you do. Nine times out of ten the "experts" have taken an isolated event out of context and used to it demonstrate some sort of Giant Fail that doesn't exist. A 90% success rate is a lot better than the "experts" 10% success rate in my book.

This would also be about the 3,120,567th repost of that particular set of comments, but then I have been told 1,000,000 times not to exaggerate.

[sinfull]

That advice is much better than the old speech of "back in my day when we had to walk 10 km to school in the snow with no shoes on"!

But i did !!
Try and get my teen to walk 500 m is a mission awww wait he's 21 now, make that 100 m !

[merv]

This would also be about the 3,120,567th repost of that particular set of comments, but then I have been told 1,000,000 times not to exaggerate.


You still working too many long and boring hours mate?

[James Deuce]

I refuse to incriminate myself.

Yes.

[alanzs]

I read that a long time ago. Pretty right on. Life isn't fair is a pretty good one. Shit happens, sometime for no outward reason. I guess its learning how to cope with what life throughs at you.

Here's a quote I have on the wall in my classroom at school:

by Charles Swindoll

The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life.

Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness, or skill. It will make or break a company ... a church ... a home.

The remarkable thing is we have a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past. We cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable.

The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude ... I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me, and 90% how I react to it. And so it is with you ... we are in charge of our Attitudes.

:2thumbsup :2thumbsup :2thumbsup :2thumbsup :2thumbsup :2thumbsup

[Forest]

That advice is much better than the old speech of "back in my day when we had to walk 10 km to school in the snow with no shoes on"!

Uphill. Both ways!

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