Rules Not Learned
13 rules that students do not learn in high school or college. Our feel-good, politically-correct teachings have created a generation of kids with no concept of reality who are set up for failure in the real world.
(1) Life is not fair. Get used to it.
(2) The world won't care about your self-esteem as much as your school does. The world will expect you to accomplish something before you feel good about yourself.
(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.
(4) If you think your teacher is rough, wait till you get a boss. He doesn't have tenure.
(5) Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your grandparents had a different word for burger-flipping. They called it "opportunity."
(6) If you screw up, it's not your parents' fault. So don't whine about your mistakes; learn from them.
(7) Before you were born, your parents weren't as boring as they are now. They got that way paying your bills, cleaning your room and listening to you tell how idealistic you are. So before you save the rain forest from the blood-sucking parasites of your parents' generation, try de-lousing the closet in your own room.
(8) Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life hasn't. In some schools, they've abolished failing grades. They'll give you as many times as you want for the right answer. This, of course, bears not the slightest resemblance to anything in real life.
(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.
(10) Television is not real life. In real life, people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.
(11) Be nice to nerds; chances are you'll end up working for nerds.
(12) Smoking does not make you look "cool"; it makes you look moronic. Ditto for purple hair and pierced body parts.
(13) Living fast and dying young is romantic --- only until you see one of your peers at room temperature.
Charles Sykes
"Dumbing Down Our Kids"