史蒂夫·乔布斯在斯坦福大学的演讲SteveJobs

史蒂夫·乔布斯在斯坦福大学的演讲 Steve Jobs

(SOUNDBITE OF APPLAUSE)

STEVE JOBS: Thank you. I'm honored to be with you today for your commencement from
one of the finest universities in the world.

(SOUNDBITE OF CHEERING)

JOBS: Truth be told, I never graduated from college, and this is the closest I've
ever gotten to a college graduation.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)


JOBS: Today, I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal.
Just three stories. The first story is about connecting the dots. I dropped out of
Reed College after the first six month but then stayed around as a drop-in for another
18 months or so before I really quit. So why'd I drop out? It started before I was
born. My biological mother was a young, unwed graduate student, and she decided to
put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college
graduate so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his
wife.

Except that when I popped out, they decided at the last minute that they really wanted
a girl. So my parent who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night
asking: We've got an unexpected baby boy. Do you want him? They said: Of course. My
biological mother found out later that my mother had never graduated from college
and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final
adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that
I would go to college. This was the start in my life.

And 17 years later, I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost
as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being
spent on my college tuition. After six month I couldn't see the value in it. I had
no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help
me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their
entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It
was pretty scary at the time, but looking back, it was one of the best decisions I
ever made.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

JOBS: The minute I dropped out, I could stop taking the required classes that didn't