The Wisdom of Jimmy John's

We stopped by the Fort Union location of Jimmy John's Gourmet Sandwiches for lunch the other day. Besides great sandwiches, the restaurant features fun signs on the walls. One of these had the following, which I am almost certainly going to post in my classroom next month.

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* Food for Thought *

Here's some awesome advice once offered to high school students by the founder of a ridiculously successful software company.

~ 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 $50,000 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 are. So before you save the rain forests from the parasites of your parents' 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 need to get the right answer. This doesn't bear the slightest resemblance to anything in the real world.

~ 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.


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They also had this sign, which will not be posted in my classroom. I just thought it was funny.



Did I mention that they also had tasty sandwiches? And chips?

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Edit: I have since been informed that the list above does not come from Bill Gates, as verified by Snopes.com. I have added the proper attribution below:

Sykes, C. J. (1995) Dumbing down our kids: Why America's children feel good about themselves but can't read, write, or add. New York: St. Martin's Press.