A Nerd's Summary of Life

[Anne]

This was an email that someone sent.

This should be posted in all schools
and work places, and at home!

       
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.

[Gurn Blanston]

Precisely summing up why America is where it is today...



----------------
Listening to:
Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra/Kazimierz Kord - Strauss Richard - Eine Alpensinfonie 15 Nebel steigen auf
(Damn, is this ever nice!)

[(poco) Sforzando]

Precisely summing up why America is where it is today...

?

[(poco) Sforzando]

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.

Bill seems to have taken MANY TIMES to get Windows right.

[Brian]

Bill seems to have taken MANY TIMES to get Windows right.

They've gotten Windows right?

[Josquin des Prez]

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.

Wait, this is actually considered normal now? You got to be kidding me.

[Que]

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.

Life is about winners and losers? Huh? 

Life can be/is hard, but that's quite another matter, and who loses is not always that predictable and sometimes up to mere chance.

Q

[lisa needs braces]

Vice President with a car phone. 

[M forever]

Life is about winners and losers? Huh? 

Yes Q, in the United States, it is all about winners and losers. Most people are losers, big, big, big time. Some are still losers, but not so much, and there is an entire, gigantic industry catering to them so they can at least pretend to be not as much losers as they really are. Why do you think this is such an anti-social, aggressive, paranoid society here? Why is this the country with by far the most prison inmates per capita in the world?

[ezodisy]

Yes Q, in the United States, it is all about winners and losers. Most people are losers, big, big, big time. Some are still losers, but not so much, and there is an entire, gigantic industry catering to them so they can at least pretend to be not as much losers as they really are. Why do you think this is such an anti-social, aggressive, paranoid society here? Why is this the country with by far the most prison inmates per capita in the world?

really, it boggles the mind why you stay there

[(poco) Sforzando]

They've gotten Windows right?

That was my point, Brian.

[The new erato]

Cheating a little and passing some one elses disc operating routines off as your own doesn't hurt, either.

[rickardg]

For another nerd's point of view, here is Steve Jobs take on life, of course this is adressed to an audience of all 'winners' (being a college commencement address).

[XB-70 Valkyrie]

Chances are you won't end up working for a nerd. Nerds do scientific research, design things, cure patients, teach your kids, fix your computer when it breaks, and generally do good things for society for relatively little pay or recognition. (Society even recognizes their talent by calling them "nerds".)

Chances are you will end up working for some completely talentless prick who happened to be born into the right family, attend the right fraternity, and who was so completely useless in every endeavour that he was promoted right to the top, where he often runs his organization into the ground--but not before he escapes with his golden parachute (and then goes on to "manage" an even bigger mess)! (And the average induhvidual out there generally respects him and his ostentatious posessions far more than the talent of the most brilliant "nerd")

Life is indeed not fair, but Marcus Aurelius summed it up beautifully nearly 2000 years ago in his Meditations. Now that should be required reading for today's kids.

Oh, and Bill Gates has done vastly more good for the world than all the whining Mac users put together are ever going to do, but that's another story.

[DavidRoss]

For another nerd's point of view, here is Steve Jobs take on life, of course this is adressed to an audience of all 'winners' (being a college commencement address).

Jobs is not a nerd--he's a clever promoter.  Steve Wozniak was the nerd behind Apple.

XB:  Who was it said, "The 'A' students teach, and the 'B' students end up working for the 'C' students?"

[XB-70 Valkyrie]

Indeed, or how about this (my own creation):

Those who can do (research), those who can't teach, and those who are totally worthless administrate.

Seriously, skyrocketing education and healthcare costs do not parallel raises and real-world gains for teachers and doctors and nurses, they parallel an ongoing trend toward increasingly top-heavy organizations--five administrators for every employee doing real work. Even in good hospitals, I see overcrowding, lack of doctors and nurses, yet walls and walls full of photos of "hospital administrators". The least paid one of these probably makes $80k right out of their MBA.

[DavidRoss]

Well, these days I manage teams of scientists and engineers--bright, committed, hard-working folks, every one!--but without someone to coordinate their efforts, determine priorities, keep them on track, secure funding, and lobby for their projects, I'm not sure that anything would ever reach completion.  [And I'm pretty damned sure we were all 'A' students!  Of course, being an 'A' student is no guarantee against idiocy, as the people currently running the corporation that owns the company I work for seem determined to prove!]

You want to see some really "totally worthless" non-value-added yahoos?  Just look at the bozos running for office!

[rockerreds]

This was an email that someone sent.

This should be posted in all schools
and work places, and at home!

       
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.

Biggest load of crap I've read in a long time.

[head-case]

Bill seems to have taken MANY TIMES to get Windows right.

The fact that Windows prevailed over Mac despite its technical inferiority falls under rule 1, Life isn't fair.

[rickardg]

Biggest load of crap I've read in a long time.

And for once I find myself defending Mr. Gates. I didn't think this sounded much like what I've heard from him previously, and at least snopes.com seems to agree with me:

This list is the work of Charles J. Sykes, author of the book Dumbing Down Our Kids: Why American Children Feel Good About Themselves But Can't Read, Write, Or Add. (The list has appeared in newspapers, although not necessarily in this book.)

Of course that doesn't lessen the value of the list, such as it is...

The many verions of the list also contain three additionals points which I actually happen to agree with:

Rule No. 12:   Smoking does not make you look cool. It makes you look moronic. Next time you're out cruising, watch an 11-year-old with a butt in his mouth. That's what you look like to anyone over 20. Ditto for "expressing yourself" with purple hair and/or pierced body parts.

Rule No. 13:   You are not immortal. (See Rule No. 12.) If you are under the impression that living fast, dying young and leaving a beautiful corpse is romantic, you obviously haven't seen one of your peers at room temperature lately.

Rule No. 14:   Enjoy this while you can. Sure parents are a pain, school's a bother, and life is depressing. But someday you'll realize how wonderful it was to be a kid. Maybe you should start now. You're welcome.

Well, except for the dyed hair part and piercing part, dyed hair grow out and piercings heal, big deal...