I have gone to drop out my iniversity=))) maybe in a ten years I'll invent some interesting))
On Fri, Apr 17, 2009 at 6:10 PM, mohammad zulfikarsiddiqui < [email protected]> wrote: > * > Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish* > > * This is the text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, > CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, > 2005.* > > I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from > one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. > Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. > 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 6 months, but then > stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. > So why did I drop out? > > It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed > college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She > felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, 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 parents, who were on a waiting list, got a > call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do > you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out > 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 > someday go to college. > > 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 months, 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. The > minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't > interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting. > > It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor > in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food > with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one > good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I > stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be > priceless later on. Let me give you one example: > > Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction > in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every > drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and > didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy > class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif > typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter > combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, > historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I > found it fascinating. > > None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But > ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all > came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first > computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single > course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or > proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its > likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped > out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal > computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it > was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. > But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later. > > Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect > them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow > connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, > life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made > all the difference in my life. > (.... to be continued) > > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "English Learner's Cafe" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/english_learners?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
