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I’ve spent one hour a week for the past several months volunteering with Junior Achievement and teaching economics at an inner city Seattle high school. I was initially intimidated by the prospect, but quickly developed a rapport with the students.

I ended up really enjoying the experience and even though I was there to teach them commerce, they also taught me the importance of a few classic business principles. Here are the top 3 things I learned from Barbara Lynch’s third period business class:

1. Roll with the punches.

Every class has a class clown (or six) that will try to heckle the teacher, incite laughter and generally disrupt things. One day, I asked the class to think of a problem that they could build a business around solving. Several kids blurted out answers, but one smart aleck yelled out, “I hate it when, after I go to the bathroom, I wipe but I don’t get it all.”

Rather than ignore his outburst, I went along with it and conceded that this was indeed a valid problem. I put the guy on the spot, asking him what product would he develop to solve this problem. “Extra grippy toilet paper” was the response I got. The remainder of the discussion focused on target market (”old people who have to go a lot”), competitive pressures (”wet wipes”) and start up costs (”need a factory”).

Everyone in the class got a good laugh out of this. But they were also very much engaged and it ended up being a memorable lesson.

Good corporations are also able to take the hits in stride; the best ones can make lemonade. Jeff Bezos was able to take one of Amazon’s money pits, under-utilized storage capacity, and turn it into arguably the most important web service of Web 2.0.

2. Be relevant or be ignored.

No high school sophomore gets truly excited about supply and demand. So how do you teach economics to adolescents raised on the bite-sized over-stimulation provided by the likes of YouTube and Robot Chicken?

I put supply and demand in the context of over-inflated Xbox 360 and PS3 prices on eBay. I used the DeBeers diamond cartel to illustrate how monopolies can disrupt normal competitive forces. Every lesson was encapsulated in a larger story that was as entertaining to a teenager as I could make it. It was clear that I had to stay relevant if these lessons were to stick.

Teachers certainly aren’t the only ones with this challenge. MSN has spent millions developing a search engine that delivers more relevant results than Google. Established publications find themselves competing with the blogosphere to produce more relevant content. Good advertising is targeted advertising is relevant advertising.

3. Respect must be earned.

I remember my high school teachers, and some of them acted as though their position as a teacher made them superior. While it did inherently make them the authority figure, it did NOT automatically make them worthy of my respect. Case in point, President Bush.

These high school students didn’t give a rats ass what school I’d gone to or what my job title was. They demanded (rightly so) that I prove my worth before they really began to open up to what I had to teach.

Whether you’re a young professional starting to teach a high school class or a new CEO taking over the reins of a company, I would argue that your previous accomplishments have little to no meaning. What matters is what you do now, with the new set of people you’re interacting with.

I realized the other night that I’m a gamer, through and through.

The significant portion of my past times revolves around games - sports, video games, board games. I’ve recently become obsessed with pickup soccer games, Gears of War and Settlers of Catan.

I saw a show the other night which claimed that games are appealing because, unlike real life, they have clearly defined rules. People enjoy games because it puts them in a restricted environment that they can easily grasp and maintain control over.

I find that hard to believe, because in many of the most enjoyable games that I’ve played, the best aspects of the games were where the rules were loose, or there were no rules. Take Settlers, for instance. Some of the greatness of the game stems from the fact that players are free to negotiate trading terms with each other. Its just so much fun to develop creative deals that helps you and hurts your opponent in extremely devious ways.

The same goes for soccer. Sure, there’s supposedly a penalty system that constrains the game. But if anyone has watched UEFA, you’ll know that the penalty system only matters if you get caught. Every game has its fair share of shoving, pushing, shirt pulling, shit talking. Zizou nearly got away with the infamous headbutt - the refs didn’t even realize what had happened until they saw a replay of it on the jumbotron.

Point is, the notion that games have strict rules is a fallacy. So why do people enjoy games so much then?

I would argue that its not about the means, but the end. The fact that there even is an end is why games are so appealing. In real life, you might have a short term goal. But inevitably, once you’ve achieved your objective, it gives rise to a dozen new ones. Or there’s something else completely out of left field for you to tackle. In the work place, is your job ever truly done? What about renovating a house?

Any game has a clear end to the struggle. Win or lose, at some point the game is over and there’s a chance to start fresh again with a new game. If only we could say the same about life.

There was something special about this morning.

I only caught a brief glimpse of it, as I walked the couple of blocks from my front door to the bus stop, but it was enough.

The sun was uncharacteristically high in the sky and there wasn’t a cloud in sight. There had been heavy rain the night before, so everything from the asphalt to the grass had the slight sheen of moisture. The air was so crisp and clean I could almost taste it - not unlike the first bite of an apple. Thick vapor formed with every breath and my exposed skin tingled from the cold. The riot of greens, reds and oranges was absolutely incredible.

Its moments like these that make life worth living.