Talking about plagiarism.  One of Bill Gates speech before a group of high school students, he gave them his eleven rules of life. Well, it is actually an excerpt from the book “Dumbing Down our Kids” by educator Charles Sykes.  It is a list of eleven things you did not learn in school and directed at high school and college grads.  Now that eleven rules is make famous by Bill Gates and somehow it landed in my Facebook.  I thought I should post them in my blog too to remind my kids.  They are not only rules, they are the truth about life.

* The one highlighted in red is my thought.

Rule 1: Life is not fair – get used to it! (Nothing in this world is fair!)

Rule 2: The world doesn’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. (If you think your boss is tough, wait till you have a husband and kids!)

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. (Refer to rule #4) *rolling eye*

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. (Having good grade is not everything.  It is how much you make at the end of the day.)

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. (@ Kharsyn – Stop calling Justin Bieber!  He won’t pick up the phone!)

Rule 11: Be nice to nerds. Chances are you’ll end up working for one. (Bill Gates copy this excerpt from the book without realizing he is the nerd.  People actually include a photo of him at the end of the note. Look who’s talking.)