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 $40,000 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 are. 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 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.

Who is it by?

oh i remember this!

Sounds like they're done by people who have lost all hope of doing anything outside of their dead end jobs. If anyone would care to quote Moral Orel here, it would be much appreciated.

i remember who it's by but we are supposed to guess and it wouldn't be a guess?

Bill Gates :lol:

Well, I was guessing it was by an evil, amoral, capitalist b@$tard.

So I was right then.

I hate bill gates as much as the next geek, but he had some points here.

Yes, if the height of one's aspiration is to be another Bill Gates

As soon as I hear people talk about "real life" I reach for the custard pies... it generally means a very narrow and nasty part of existence that ignores everything good about life and the experiences of most of the rest of humanity. And generally boils down to shafting other people for cash.

I'd rather make money in a legitimate way (microsoft are well known for illegal business practices) not by becoming the next Bill Gates.

There are several good points about how life really is here though - real life does indeed have very few breaks and you won't be given many second chances when you screw up like you get at school. This doesn't mean there's nothing good, just that you do have to actually put up with some crap to get the good stuff.

I suppose it's excusable if I take my life advice from someone that has had a more realistic life than being the richest man on earth. I have to say I would lose my grip of reality very quickly if I had that kind of money. Not to mention the obvious fact that Bill Gates has never had a boss, never flipped burgers, and has either always had a fair life or broken laws in order to make it more fair for him.

Postscript-I'm sure we can all point to several Microsoft mistakes that show that he has also gotten numerous second chances.

So you think it's unrealistic to say that you won't make $40,000 per year straight out of high school, that refusing to flip burgers due to counterproductive pride (resulting in being unemployed instead) is stupid and in the real world you don't get as much time off as in school?

I don't know considering that I have not gone through any of those things. However, I'm going to wait to hear them from someone who has actually dealt with going through the ups and downs of life instead of becoming immensely wealthy and being able to take as much time off as he wants. Bill Gates uses 40,000 dollars to wipe his *** every day. I'm sure he has individual things in his house worth 15-20 times that. So I'll take his advice with a grain of salt until I hear it from someone more hardened to life.

I think BG worked very hard to get where he is (and also cheated very cleverly) and also I think he is a business savant.

Most of us (not me, I am not that diligent) will work very hard their whole lives and never get to a millionth of what he has achieved, just because we are not as clever/genius as him.

That being said, working hard is still a good thing to do, because trying to do something useful is part of our duty as humans.

I work hard, sometimes... As much as necessary, not much more.  I would like to say I had given 100% to things, but I think I haven't.  I usually feel like I am only about 75% there, if that.

Of course this could be end-of-semester pessimism...

I'd rather help overthrow capitalism so that people could get on with being human rather than making money.

Indeed. And telling people to shut up, take the crap and then dish it out when they get higher up the food chain is a sure way to make things continue like this.