Here's some advice from a book called
"Dumbing Down Our Kids"
-- things you do not
learn in school. He talks about how feel-good,
politically correct teaching has created a full
generation of kids with no concept of reality and how
this concept sets 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 40 thousand dollars a year right out
of high school. You won't be a vice president with
car phone, until you earn both.
RULE 4
If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a
boss. He doesn't have tenure.
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 are. 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.
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.