can I get an "Amen"???

Thanks to dear friend, Joyce, for sharing the following with me:

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. [Otherwise known as the trophy generation, where every kid gets a trophy no matter who the best is, who works the hardest or which team out performed the others.  My niece and I were just talking about this the other day.]

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.

[There's a generation growing up right now who is not developing their coping skills because society & "authorities" on child-development have told us we are damaging their little psyches when we recognize one (obviously not the damaged one) as out achieving another.  When disappointment or reality knocks on their door, as an adult, they will not recognize it nor will they have the slightest idea what to do with it, except to run from it or wake up in a mental ward screaming, "Why didn't SOMEONE teach me that the world doesn't revolve around me????"  I must back-up... I think this mentality started long before the present generation of children, hence our divorce rate is off the charts. LB]

Urban Legends states that Bill Gates did not write the above, however, Charles J Sykes did, but who knows who that is???  Anyway, old Charlie hit the nail on the head.  Maybe Bill Gates wishes he'd said it.  He definitely turned out to be a nerd that a lot of people worked for.

=>>Let's just go ahead and give Charlie recognition.<<=  He's actually quite a guy.

Mr. Sykes also wrote an article entitled The Prayers of Clarence Thomas that I really enjoyed.  I'm hooked now and plan to read everything I can find that Mr. Sykes has written starting with the list on the American Thinker blog.  I hope you enjoy my discovery... I don't believe it was a coincidence.