Between the academic world and the business world: Revisit

As it is an entrepreneurship class, we have been trying to work together in an simulated company setting. We had some discussion on what is different between the university class setting and a IT company setting.

Yesterday, I came cross an "old" article "Bill Gates's 11 Rules of Life", it has the text of one of his talks to a group of high school students. I feel that many of the 11 rules addressed the our issue too.

Here are some of the relevant rules that I picked:

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 4: If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss. (My favorite one, BTW)
Rule 5: Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your Grandparents had a different word for burger flipping -- they called it opportunity.
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.

You can read the 11 rules at many websites, one of it is provided here.