介绍:
Thank you. I’m honored to be with you today for your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. Truth be told, I never graduated from college and this is the closest I’ve ever gotten to a college graduation.
謝謝。今天來參加世上最好大學之一的畢業典禮讓我感到榮幸。老實說，我大學從未畢業而現在是我離大學畢業最近的時刻。
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.
今天我想告訴你我生命的 3 個故事。就這樣。沒有什麼。只有 3 個故事。第一個故事是關於把點連接起來。
I dropped out of Reed College after the first six months but then stayed around as a drop-in for another eighteen 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 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’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.
待在里德學院 6 個月後我即輟學，但仍然於課堂旁聽且待了約 18 個月後才真正退學。所以我為什麼輟學？這從我還未出生即開始。我的親生母親是個年輕、未婚的研究所學生，而她決定讓我被領養。她非常堅信我應被大學畢業生所領養，所以一切都已準備好讓我一出生即被一位律師及他的太太所領養，只是當我蹦出時，他們在最後一分鐘決定他們真正想要的是女孩。所以我的父母，他們在等候名單上，在半夜接到一通電話問說：「我們有一個突然出現的男嬰兒，你們想要他嗎？」他們說：「當然。」我的親生母親後來發現我的母親大學從未畢業而我 的父親高中從未畢業。她拒絕簽署最後的領養文件。幾個月後她終於接受，當我父母承諾我將會上大學後。
This was the start in my life. And seventeen years later, I did go to college, but I naïvely 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 of how college was going to help me figure it out, and here I was, spending all 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 far more interesting.
這是我生命的開始。而 17 年過後，我真的上了大學，但我天真的選了一個幾乎與史丹佛一樣貴的學院，而我勞動階級父母所有的積蓄都花費在我的大學學費上。6 個月後，我無法看見它的價值。我不知道我人生要做什麼，也不知道大學將如何幫助我想出，而我在這裡，花費我父母畢生所存下的錢。所以我輟學並相信一切事情都將順利解決。這在當時非常的可怕，但回顧過去，這是我做過最好的決定之一。(講到這時觀眾都在笑，但賈伯斯並沒有在開玩笑…) 我輟學的那一分起，我可以不用上那些我不感興趣的必修課程，並開始旁聽一些看起來有趣許多的課程.
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 five-cent deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the seven 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.
並非一切都是美好的。我沒有宿舍，所以我睡在朋友宿舍房間的地板。我退還可口可樂瓶子來換得五分錢的押金來購買食物，而每個星期天晚上我會走 7 英哩的路程穿過城鎮來到哈瑞奎師那神廟吃每星期的一頓好餐。我超愛它的！而我因跟隨好奇及直覺所涉足的的大部分事情後來都證明是無價的。讓我給你一個例子。
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 sans-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.
里德學院在當時提供全國或許最好的文字藝術課程。整個校園內，每一個海報、每個抽屜上的每一個標記都是用手美麗的刻畫出來。因為我已輟學且不必選修一般的課程，我決定上一堂文字藝術課程來學習文字藝術。我學到襯線及無襯線字體、改變不同字母組合間的空間、是什麼造就優良的排版。它是美麗的、俱歷史意義的、且藝術上微妙而致科學無法描述，而它使我著迷。
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, it’s likely that no personal computer would have them.
這沒有一樣有任何希望會在我生命裡被實際運用。但十年後當我們在設計第一台蘋果電腦時，它全部都回來了，而我們將它全部都設計在蘋果電腦裡。它是第一個有美麗版面設計的電腦。如果我從未在大學裡旁聽那一堂課，蘋果電腦絕不會有幾種不同字體，或間隔均稱的字型，而由於微軟只是複製蘋果，或許沒有個人電腦會有它們.
If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on that calligraphy class and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do.
如果我從未輟學，我就不會旁聽那堂文字藝術課程，而個人電腦可能就不會有它們美麗的版面設計。
Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college, but it was very, very clear looking backwards 10 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--because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart, even when it leads you off the well-worn path, and that will make all the difference.
當然，當我在大學往前看時，把點連接起來是不可能的，但十年後往後看它是非常，非常清楚的。再提一次，往前看時你無法把點連起來。只有往後看時你才能連接它 們，所以你必需相信點將在你的未來以某種方式連接。你必需相信某些事情 – 你的直覺、命運、人生、因緣、不管是什麼 – 因為相信點將在未來的路上連接起來將帶給你追隨內心聲音的信心，即便它引領你離開已被踏平的步道，而那將造就所有的不同。
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