Bill Gates

Found this on another forum I post at and I agree 100% with what he says. The text below is all copy/pasted.



Love him or hate him, he sure hits the nail on the head with this! 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.

nicely put. let me just point out the most important fact of life again:

Rules 1 and 2 don't add up. Otherwise, nicely put indeed.

Avior wrote:

Rules 1 and 2 don't add up. Otherwise, nicely put indeed.

I'm not sure I understand you

"Rule 1 : Life is not fair - get used to it!" means you get used to life not being fair.

"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." means it doesn't matter about how you feel about yourself, people still expect you to get on with your job and will get on your case about it if you don't.

If anything, 2 reinforces 1 as far as I see it.

the man knows his deal... tho i realise some of those rules are more appliable to North-american reality i can actually relate to some of them...

Gurfang wrote:

Avior wrote:

Rules 1 and 2 don't add up. Otherwise, nicely put indeed.

I'm not sure I understand you

"Rule 1 : Life is not fair - get used to it!" means you get used to life not being fair.

"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." means it doesn't matter about how you feel about yourself, people still expect you to get on with your job and will get on your case about it if you don't.

If anything, 2 reinforces 1 as far as I see it.

Yeah, my bad. For some reason i didn't think that by "world" he was referring to people
Anyway, the first rule still seems out of place because all the others are all more or less about "you only get as much as you work for", which seems quite fair to me.

Err...so? Kids don't need telling this, there's nothing new or original or groundbreaking being said. You'd think the richest man in the world might be able to offer something more than what any chain e-mail or forum troll could tell you.

Crowley wrote:

Err...so? Kids don't need telling this, there's nothing new or original or groundbreaking being said. You'd think the richest man in the world might be able to offer something more than what any chain e-mail or forum troll could tell you.

The problem is that the teachers DON'T tell them this! Teaching has had failing changed to "different abilities" and whilst it may be the case in some cases I think that people need to realise that they may not have much chance of being more than a dustbin man (or refuse collector to the PC brigade) unless they actually try (and even then some are not capable of going beyond it at all).

Not that there is anything wrong with people doing that job, but people are giving kids ideas about how they can get anything they want for very little effort (look at our politicians as prime examples!!!) and it means that young people just don't bother.

I just don't see it. I've literally just stepped out of education at a state school in a relatively crap part of the country and my dad has worked as a teacher for well over twenty years now, and neither of us have seen it. In fact, I've yet to see or hear of anyone who has outside the pages of a tabloid. I just sat my GCSEs, and for the entire duration every pupil, whatever their ability, was told "You get out what you put in" time and time again.

Also, politicians being corrupt isn't what you'd call a new phenomenon, and they're all too old to be products of the education system we have at present anyway, so I fail to see how it's connected. Unless it was just a random bit of politician bashing, which I wholeheartedly support. ;P

The politicians bit is just one example of something that young people can look at and think "Sweet! I can do bugger all and get loads of money", so I guess it is a bit of a bashing but with a connection to the topic.

As to whether it happens, trust me it does! I have been working with young people for about 10 years now (I'm a youth worker) and recently (last 5 years, roughly) I have noticed that whenever conversations about future come up there is always the same attitude of "Something will happen" or "I'll be alright" without any realistic thoughts about how that will happen (generally it's "Oh, my parents will put me up as long as I need them to" and other similar ideas) and this has come from being told that they aren't failing in one area or another and thus not striving to get better. Everything has been said to be fine with their education and then they end up with below par exam results and then they find that these results actually mean something to someone i.e. the outside world.

Not really inspirational. If you need any of that stuff pointed out to you, you probably ain't gonna get it.

Vexacus wrote:

Not really inspirational. If you need any of that stuff pointed out to you, you probably ain't gonna get it.

If only that were true!

Nice post Benton, should post it on guild forum aswell imo

Complete negative crap and I honestly don't believe Bill Gates was allowed to say something like this without fox news and like every other media company in the united states bombing him with negative publicity >.>

VIVA LA IDEALISM!!
*waves the french flag for some reason*

More of less sounds like somone wrote it who lost his/her job for some reason and was completely depressed about that.

Oh and even if this was true, it wouldnt work in most parts of europe, or asia (even worse there I think), as we dont have capitalistic systems like the US does.

Indaril wrote:

Complete negative crap and I honestly don't believe Bill Gates was allowed to say something like this without fox news and like every other media company in the united states bombing him with negative publicity >.>

VIVA LA IDEALISM!!
*waves the french flag for some reason*

More of less sounds like somone wrote it who lost his/her job for some reason and was completely depressed about that.

Oh and even if this was true, it wouldnt work in most parts of europe, or asia (even worse there I think), as we dont have capitalistic systems like the US does.

Everywhere that can be classified as a developed or developing nation is capitalist to a greater or lesser extent!