Written by 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.) For more information about this, go to http://www.snopes.com/language/document/liferule.htm
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 50 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 parent’s 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 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 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.