Rules kids don't learn in school by ... not Gates, not Vonnegut ....

[shesulsa]

It's Commencement time and I obligingly received the obligingly sent email crediting eleven rules to a speech Bill Gates allegedly gave to Mt. Whitney High School in Visalia, California. It's also mistakenly credited to Kurt Vonnegut Jr. giving a speech at his college graduation.

But the true author is Charles J. Sykes and there are actually 50 anecdotes. I found several versions of even the correctly-attributed rules but chose this list - a cream of the crop from his 50:

#1 Life is not fair. Get used to it.


#7 If you think your teacher is tough, wait until you get a boss. He doesn’t have tenure, so he tends to be a bit edgier. When you screw up, he’s not going to ask you how you FEEL about it.



#9 Your school may have done away with winners and losers. Life hasn’t.



#14 Looking like a slut does not empower you.

#15 Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your grandparents had a different word for burger flipping. They called it “opportunity.”



#29 Learn to deal with hypocrisy.



#32 Television is not real life.



#38 Look people in the eye when you meet them.



#42 Change the oil.



#43 Don’t let the success of others depress you.



#47 You are not perfect, and you don’t have to be.


#48 Tell yourself the story of your life. Have a point.


#50 Enjoy this while you can.

 

[arnisador]

What happened to the most important one:

"Wear sunscreen."

 

[Sukerkin]

Those are good, Georgia. I have a feeling that I've encountered these before but they've been swallowed by that Black-Hole in my memory - I shall search out the full list I reckon and see what pithy wisdom is there to be had :tup:.

 

[Mr G]

I have no idea where I picked this up, but:

There is a difference between an excuse and a reason.

 

[KenpoTex]

I've seen a version attributed to Gates, thanks for the clarification.

do you have a link to the full version handy?

 

[FieldDiscipline]

Good stuff. Interesting that its not Gates, I too have had the email.

 

[Grenadier]

Regarding #15, there's nothing wrong with flipping burgers, if that's what's available.

Someone who works hard, and is willing to work their way up the food chain, can become a manager, and eventually, with time, and effort, all the way to a district manager.

There is actually decent money to be made once you get past swing manager with any of the fast food chains.

 

[Sukerkin]

A little off topic I know but I do have to add my agreement to Grenadiers point there. There is too much of a prevelent attitutude that such and such a job is 'beneath' someone. If you need to earn money then a more open approach is much more appropriate.

I speak as someone who has been through a period of thinking that manual/unskilled labour was 'beneath' me as a graduate in Economics (especially being half-disabled). A while with very little money soon convinced me that working as an order-picker in a refrigerated warehouse or as general labour laying tarmac was far more dignified than drawing the dole.

 

[jkembry]

All very good points. These are life lessons I learned while in High School some 30 years ago...back when there were winners and losers and if you were on the losing side, you tried to get better instead of griping. There were bullies in school that would toughen you up for the real world...mentally and physically. And yes...I never made the team...but I didn't pout about it either. There were players that were better. And I also was not an A-student...but somehow learned how to learn what I needed to get by 20 years of the Navy and another 10 years of contracting to the government.

These are things that I see missing in schools now...or at least I do around where I live.

- Jeff -