posted February 22, 2007 06:13 PM              

• Rule No. 1: Life is not fair. Get used to it. The average teen-ager uses the phrase "It's not fair" 8.6 times a day. You got it from your parents, who said it so often you decided they must be the most idealistic generation ever. When they started hearing it from their own kids, they realized Rule No. 1.

• Rule No. 2: The real world won't care as much about your self-esteem as much as your school does. It'll expect you to accomplish something before you feel good about yourself. This may come as a shock. Usually, when inflated self-esteem meets reality, kids complain that it's not fair. (See Rule No. 1)

• Rule No. 3: Sorry, you won't make $40,000 a year right out of high school. And you won't be a vice president or have a car phone either. You may even have to wear a uniform that doesn't have a Gap label.

• Rule No. 4: If you think your teacher is tough, wait 'til you get a boss. He doesn't have tenure, so he tends to be a bit edgier. When you screw up, he's not going to ask you how you feel about it.

• Rule No. 5: Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your grandparents had a different word for burger flipping. They called it opportunity. They weren't embarrassed making minimum wage either. They would have been embarrassed to sit around talking about Kurt Cobain all weekend.

• Rule No. 6: It's not your parents' fault. If you screw up, you are responsible. This is the flip side of "It's my life," and "You're not the boss of me," and other eloquent proclamations of your generation. When you turn 18, it's on your dime. Don't whine about it, or you'll sound like a baby boomer.

• Rule No. 7: Before you were born your parents weren't as boring as they are now. They got that way paying your bills, cleaning up your room and listening to you tell them how idealistic you are. And by the way, before you save the rain forest from the blood-sucking parasites of your parents' generation, try delousing the closet in your bedroom.

• Rule No. 8: Your school may have done away with winners and losers. Life hasn't. In some schools, they'll give you as many times as you want to get the right answer. Failing grades have been abolished and class valedictorians scrapped, lest anyone's feelings be hurt. Effort is as important as results. This, of course, bears not the slightest resemblance to anything in real life. (See Rule No. 1, Rule No. 2 and Rule No. 4.)

• Rule No. 9: Life is not divided into semesters, and you don't get summers off. Not even Easter break. They expect you to show up every day. For eight hours. And you don't get a new life every 10 weeks. It just goes on and on. While we're at it, very few jobs are interested in fostering your self-expression or helping you find yourself. Fewer still lead to self-realization. (See Rule No. 1 and Rule No. 2.)

• Rule No. 10: Television is not real life. Your life is not a sitcom. Your problems will not all be solved in 30 minutes, minus time for commercials. In real life, people actually have to leave the coffee shop to go to jobs. Your friends will not be as perky or pliable as Jennifer Aniston.

• Rule No. 11: Be nice to nerds. You may end up working for them. We all could.

• 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.

posted March 03, 2007 10:44 PM            

It's the last rule. The one that says life will get worse after you leave home. I think that's a bad thing to say. More than that, it's just plain wrong. Being 24, life is MUCH better for me than when I was 16. The way I see it, life gets better as I get older, and the further back I look at my life (that I can recall), the worse it looks. It mystifies me that some want to be 6 or 16 again.

I felt like I had to add this because there are plenty of kids who are enduring real pain, and sometimes real problems. I think if they really believe that life will only get worse as they get older (like this list says it will), they might just off themselves before they realize that the author who did this list is as pretentious as the author thinks teens are. (I'm not saying I disagree with everything he says, but I don't agree with all of it and I think his attitude is a bad example for teens to emulate.)

Don't let someone suffering the angst of his own increasing irrelevency and boomer narcissism rob you of your hope for the future. Life might get worse, but it can also get better. Much better if you think your life sucks now.

And btw, I learned life is unfair in school, and plenty of school faculty members and fellow students were ready, even eager, to destroy self-esteem (unless you were a jock of some kind). Plenty of kids really are smarter than teachers (and textbooks), too. The tests many teachers take to become qualified to teach is as "hard" as the GED to pass, and I've met some teachers that couldn't even use a library! And while there are some good teachers out there, there are also plenty of teachers who seem determined to serve as a bad example to the youth under them. I also believe that many kids HAVE learned respect for adults but then lost it after relentless exposure to the "do as I say not as I do" philosophy of the authority figures over them (that was the way it was for me--I only respected a few adults because only a few adults were worthy of that respect).

posted August 14, 2007 02:37 AM            

High school never prepares you for life. That's because in high school they still treat people like 5 year olds when they are 17 or 18 and have a license and some live independently. This does not make high school ‘easier’. They do not "cushion" their feelings.. They treat them like '5 year old abusers" - that's more like it. No respect whatsoever.

This whole "work sucks" routine .. depends entirely on what you do. After high school I've been studying at University. It absolutely DOES NOT compare to high school. The teachers are about 100 times nicer and more knowledgeable and they do not yell at me for idiosyncratic things like, wearing the wrong coloured socks (yes we still have uniforms in Australian high schools lol).

In Uni, everything is pretty much up to you. The information is there but it's up to you to get organized and hand in everything on time, study, read, show up to class etc. No one is going to yell at you for not handing in an assignment but you do fail the class. Most people learn to be responsible all by themselves.. so that's great.

In high school you don't learn to be responsible.. All you know is that, if you don't do something, you will either get yelled at by a teacher or your parents will be called to school. It works for primary school but it's quite ridiculous after a certain age.

So far I've only done voluntary work, in the same area where I'm studying. I absolutely love the people I have met so far and they were not "bad" bosses.. I'm sure there are plenty of those around.. but the firms I worked at had a majority of intelligent and approachable people. I learnt a lot.

Most people have a hard time in high school. It goes on from 8 am to 3.30 am in most places here. That’s almost 8 hours a day anyway.. What world does this person live in?? Kids are completely over-loaded these days, both emotionally and study-wise.

This entire thing should be written the other way around.. as in : Once you've been through high school without committing suicide or quitting all together.. your entire life will seem just that little bit nicer.. no matter what happens lol

quote:

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Someday you'll realize how wonderful it was to be a kid.

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posted August 14, 2007 03:01 PM              

He sounds like his grandfather.

"It's not your parents' fault."

k, sure pal. You bozos have nothing to do with the way we turn out. right.

If kids were respected more, taught the real rules of the game and how to play it, how to find inner peace and lasting happiness, this world would be a different place and some of you adults wouldnt be so annoyed with them. But most of you havent found that, so how can you teach them it?

"Someday you'll realize how wonderful it was to be a kid."

Actually i did realize that when i was a kid and even as a teenager. I often thought about how how awful it was going to be to be a "grown up" and that i should savor these days. So i did. Now, looking back, i wouldnt want to go back there for anything.

I agree that life gets better as the years go by and better when I forget all i was taught to believe.

The whole, "You'll do it because i'm your parent and I said so., & I had it so much harder than you did." etc, etc. is very damaging and old.

Children are our greatest teachers.

posted January 05, 2009 07:15 PM            

some of it is true, but some of it is also a load of implying-rubbish.

posted January 11, 2009 07:15 PM              

quote:

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It's the last rule. The one that says life will get worse after you leave home. I think that's a bad thing to say. More than that, it's just plain wrong. Being 24, life is MUCH better for me than when I was 16. The way I see it, life gets better as I get older, and the further back I look at my life (that I can recall), the worse it looks. It mystifies me that some want to be 6 or 16 again.

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I agree. Life got to be fabulous once I left my parents' home. I never want to go back to those days. They were pure hell.