Are you kidding me? That's what I was told my entire life.
Life isn't easy, it's a struggle, blah blah yadda yadda.
It's very true. If you ask me, this "you could be president someday!" bullshit is more harmful to kids.
My mom used to tell me "Life is hard DarkTussin - it's not easy". HA, life was so easy I thought. I knew I was going to be rich by my early 20's because I was so good with computers. I would get hired onto a security firm and be the best one there. From there, idk, maybe president someday - if I wanted the job.
How fun was it in my early 20's to realize that none of my childhood dreams would pan out. That I would never be president because my family wasn't filled with millionaires in politics. That I would have to work for things in my life - that there wasn't going to be an easy way to victory.
I would have loved to catch a break by building a clock or simply getting noticed for something - I used to always push the boundaries at school by writing scripts that propagated like viruses through shared drives.
All I got was indefinitely suspended from the computers and put in ISS. My "big opportunity" came at 15 when I took some co-op class where they got me in touch with a company that needed "VBA developers."
I didn't know VBA at all, but what they really wanted me to do was decompile FLA files. They didn't realize that decompilers were a thing, so they asked me if I could get the .fla version of the .swf file. I took a hit off my pipe, downloaded a decompiler, clicked a button - exhaled and said "Sure, I can do that."
"How much do you want?"
Me, being the bisness man, seeing my future unfold in front of me ... "One. Hundred. Dollars." "Okay ... for this set of files or?"
"Sure, whatever, just send me $100"
"Okay..."
They had thousands of these files that they wanted from me... I don't know how much I could have asked for or made, but I do remember being way too high to get home to my computer and click the "decompile" button. I told them I'd "do it later."
Lost that - been on the struggle ever since. I didn't have a suitcase clock to give me a fortune or make me president. Most kids are going to be depressed and hate their lives - that or they'll get pregnant, have families, make a decent living after going to college... but they'll never be hugely successful.
Most people just don't care - don't care enough to try hard enough to make it out of the middle class.
So I say again, who cares if this kid gets to go to MIT?