My daughter has brought my attention to the following article – my thanks to her.
What follows are extracts of a speech given by Bill Gates to an audience of High School pupils. The speech was about 11 rules they would not learn in school. He talked 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.
Here are the rules (parents especially will relate to these):
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 £60000 a year right out of high school. You won’t be a vice-president with a car phone until you earn them 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 parents’ 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 in 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.
Comments 6
love this stuff i have saved it to show my grandkids and anyone else that i can ambush into looking i am a convert to NLP (neuro-linguistic-programming ) and have also read Dale Carnegies book “How to win friends and influence people” which are the basic principles of most of the speakers at brighton especially pat masiti, so this is great down to earth basic stuff from bill gates , the man could have been born in yorkshire !
Posted 18 Jul 2008 at 1:08 am ¶Hello, Peter
Glad you enjoyed the article. Will tell my daughter tonight when she gets home (you’ll recall she supplied me with it) – got to encourage the “young uns”, you know!
(Cheeky request!) Given your interest in self-improvement, do you have any gems that you could share with the rest of us in the “Words of Wisdom” section?
Thanks
David
Posted 18 Jul 2008 at 12:51 pm ¶Further to Peter’s comment above, there’s an interesting article in the Daily Telegraph today, which you can read by clicking on the following link:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/2505018/Microsoft-founder-Bill-Gates-has-Yorkshire-roots.html
David
Posted 06 Aug 2008 at 4:33 pm ¶i knew there was a yokshire connection somewhere, wouldnt surprise me now if someone said nelson mandela and charlie williams are related as well !!!
Posted 09 Aug 2008 at 2:56 pm ¶Here’s a random fact:
Posted 11 Aug 2008 at 8:10 pm ¶There are only 18 countries richer than Bill Gates.
Urban myth or amazing fact? I’d love to know. I don’t have a clue how much money that is or how much he earns but I’m sure that it would cause even the proudest of Yorkshire folk to ask, “how much?!”
Seems I have a large Yorkshire contingent in my readership!
Being a Yorkshireman myself, I know that a lot of good stuff comes from my home county, but I’ve yet to be convinced of the Nelson Mandela / Charlie Williams connection. However, nice try, Peter!
And, please, no more jokes about Yorkshiremen being careful with their money – it’s all a malicious rumour. Now then, where did I put that 2p off coupon…
Posted 17 Aug 2008 at 5:40 pm ¶Post a Comment