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The NewChrousty Internet Relay Chat Network
some rules kids won't learn in school
San Diego Union Tribune, September 19, 1996 - Charles J. Sykes
Unfortunately, there are some things that children should be learning in school, but don't. Not all of them have to do with academics. As a modest back-to-school offering, here are some basic rules that may not have found their way into the standard curriculum.
- 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 realised Rule No. 1.
- 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 it's not fair. (See Rule No. 1)
- 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.
- 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.
- Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your grand-parents had a different word of 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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)
- 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 interesting in fostering your self-expression or helping you find yourself. Fewer still lead to self-realization. (See Rule No. 1 and Rule No. 2.)
- 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.
- Be nice to nerds. You may end up working for them. We all could.
- 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.
- 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.
- Enjoy this while you can. Sure parents are a pain, school's a bother, and life is depressing. But someday you'll realise how wonderful it as to be a kid. Maybe you should start now.
irc etiquette
By Lea Viljanen, Ari Husa and Troy Rollo
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Language
The most widely understood and spoken language on IRC is English. However! As IRC is used in many different countries, English is by no means the only language. If you want to speak some other language than English (for example with your friends), go to a separate channel and set the topic (with /topic) to indicate that. For example
/topic Finnish only!
would mean that this channel would be reserved for Finnish discussion. On the other hand, you should check the topic (with /list command) before you move to a channel to see if there are any restrictions about language.
On a channel not restricted by /topic, please speak a language everybody can understand. If you want to do otherwise, change channels and set the topic accordingly.
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Hello/Goodbye
It's not necessary to greet everybody on a channel personally. Usually one "Hello" or equivalent is enough. And don't expect everybody to greet you back. On a channel with 20 people that would mean one screenful of hellos. It's sensible not to greet, in order not to be rude to the rest of the channel. If you must say hello to somebody you know, do it with a private /msg. The same applies to goodbyes. Also note that using IRCII's /ON facility to automatically say hello or goodbye to people is extremely poor etiquette. Nobody wants to receive autogreets. They are not only obviously automatic, but even if you think you are being polite you are actually sounding insincere and also interfering with the personal environment of the recipient when using autogreets. If somebody wants to be autogreeted on joining a channel, they will autogreet themselves.
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Discussion
When you come to a new channel it's advised you to listen for a while to get an impression of what's discussed. Please feel free to join in, but do not try to force your topic into the discussion if that doesn't come naturally.
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