Bill Gates: 11 Things You Don’t Learn in School
Posted on: March 14, 2011
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Bill Gates
A physician client of mine passed on to me this list, from Bill Gates’ talk in a high school. There is a good bit of wisdom there. If you have kids in high school, pass this on to them.
Rule 5 : Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity.
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.
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11 Responses to "Bill Gates: 11 Things You Don’t Learn in School"
March 15, 2011 at 1:06 pm
Bill Gates didn’t get to where he is now for no good reason, did he?! What’s amazing is he seems to know high-schoolers’ mentality very well. Very smart guy.
April 3, 2011 at 3:02 pm
This is an apocryphal story. Bill Gates never said or wrote this.
The text is an email chain edited version of an op-ed piece that appeared in the San Diego Union-Tribune on September 19, 1996. In fact, the piece was written by Charles J. Sykes, who also authored of “Dumbing Down Our Kids: Why American Children Feel Good about Themselves, but Can’t Read, Write, or Add”. Bill Gates had nothing to do with this.
April 3, 2011 at 3:33 pm
@martingale, next time I have to check the fact with you when I got something from a friend I found interesting.
May 1, 2011 at 10:16 pm
I guess school misses alot of lessons, lesson concerned with real life, with practicality in addition to the art of living. All people go to same schools same books they want us to grow this way, other elite go to other schools they teach them the shortcut ways and how to live efficiently. Few people of regular schools got the chance, while the elite will surely get the chance. I suggest that we get the real education, not the rusted one.
May 2, 2011 at 1:01 pm
I suppose so. I have never attended any elite school, I don’t know how it is like. My alma mater Carnegie Mellon is a top school in computer science, I did not learn any short cut there though.
June 16, 2012 at 5:56 pm
So, Michael Zhuang….maybe you should take Bill Gates out of the title & insert the real author & where it came from? Give credit where it’s due. 🙂
June 18, 2012 at 2:10 am
Jeannie, the physician client of mine who passed me this list said it was Bill Gates, there was no reason to think he was lying. If you know the original source, please let me know, I am more than happy to credit it.
As to my client, I can not reveal his name. He already told me he is not the source of the list.
June 23, 2012 at 5:56 am
Your friend wasn’t lying, he was just passing on wrong information. This list, prior to it being attributed to Bill Gates in 2000, was claimed to be written by Kurt Vonnegut in ’98 and earlier than that, a Charles Sykes book in ’96. None were true, Ann Landers once ran it as Author Unknown.
I think that’s where it stays…
June 25, 2012 at 5:39 pm
Greg, thanks for the comment. I guess there is no way for me to verify one way or the others, so I just let the post stand with all these comments as qualifier.
The Investment Scientist 
March 14, 2011 at 3:27 pm
Great list! I’m going to link to it on my site. Love #11.