My dear ex-sales maven, Donna
Cook, sent this to me. Supposedly Bill
Gates wrote it; I don’t know if he did, but whoever wrote it has the right idea
IMHO.
Life is not fair; get used to it.
The world won't care about your
self-esteem. The world will expect you
to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself.
You will NOT make 40 thousand
dollars a year right out of high school.
You won't be a vice president with a car phone, until you earn both.
If you think your teacher is
tough, wait till you get a boss. He doesn't have tenure.
Flipping burgers is not beneath
your dignity. Your grandparents had a
different word for burger flipping; they called it opportunity.
If you mess up, it's not your
parents' fault, so don't whine about your mistakes, learn from them.
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.
Your school may have done away
with winners and losers, but life has not.
In some schools they have abolished failing grades; 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.
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.
Television is NOT real life. In real life people actually have to leave
the coffee shop and go to jobs.
Be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end up working for one.