Vocabulary

 

unwed	honored	commencement
dot	intuition	biological mother
drop	drop out	truth be told
pop out	big deal	put me up for adoption
naive	idealistic	middle of the night
refuse	find out	unexpected
relent	bible (2)	combination
value	farewell	figure it out
tuition	figure (3)	work out (2)
scary	pancreas	working class
require	priceless	look back (2)
dorm	typeface	throughout
temple	deposit	stumble upon
settle	curious	calligraphy
fire (2)	apologize	proportional
vary	amazing	approach (2)
needle	vision (2)	fascinating
destiny	affair (2)	application (2)
row (3)	multiple	devastating
karma	space (2)	let me down
loss	let down	typography
hire	campus	make a difference
baton	board (2)	come back
focus	diverge	board of director
fall out	adoption	drop the baton
gut (2)	pass (3)	entrepreneur
screw	screw up	dormitory
dawn	run away	it dawned upon me
one bit	diagnose	turn of events
reject	creative	start over
subtle	period (3)	fall in love
toy	animate	turn of events
guess	pretty (2)	renaissance
awful	intestine	remarkable
brick	convince	keep going
satisfy	believe	keep looking
roll	matter	roll on (2)
faith	stumble	impression (2)
fill	concept	hitchhiking
pride	external	encounter
avoid	fall away	embarrassment
way	trap (2)	make way
scan	cancer	at the time
tumor	curable	longer than
expect	incurable	make sure
throat	order (3)	impossible
biopsy	code (2)	buttoned up (2)
sedate	stick (2)	endoscope
cell	capture	microscope
naked	surgery	patient (2)
quote	share (3)	intellectual
hell	heaven	change (2)
escape	courage	back cover
waste	somehow	drown (2)
dogma	drown out	expectation
result	intuition	paperback
fellow	adventure	publication
earth	primary	last minute
poem	touch (2)	waiting list
glue	scissors	desktop publishing
sort of	opinion	typewriter
neat	overflow	Polaroid camera
notion	dramatic	come along (2)
agent	issue (3)	run its course
anew	foolish

 
 
 
 
 

Video

 

 
 
 
 

Transcript

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. Truth be told, I never graduated from college. 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?

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 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, it’s 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.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents’ garage when I was 20.

We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4,000 employees.

We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30.

And then I got fired.

What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love.

And so I decided to start over.

I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything.

It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar — and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world.

In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple’s current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I’m pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn’t been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it.

Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick.

Don’t lose faith.

I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did.

You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do.

If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on.

So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.”

It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life.

Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.

Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there.

And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.

Right now the new is you.

But someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away.

Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice.

And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I parting words to you is “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.”

Thank you all very much.

*     *     *     *     *     *     *

 Questions

 
Atanasoff-Berry Computer (ABC). Steve Jobs’ speech consisted only of advice and suggestions. Is this true or false?

ENIAC (1945). Did Steve have a “normal” upbringing? What did his biological mother want?

Mainframe Computers (1950s-1960s). Steve Jobs studied computer engineering at university, and eventually got a Ph.D. Is this right or wrong? Was what had happened to him in university good or bad? Why was this good or bad?

Minicomputers (1960s-1970s). Jobs and Wozniak (Woz) created the first Apple computer in a laboratory of a large, multinational corporation. Is this right or wrong?

Atari and Early Personal Computers (1970s). Did Jobs remain a CEO at Apple for many decades? What had happened to Steve at Apple? Was this a complete tragedy?

Apple I (1976) and Apple II (1977). Steve Jobs got depressed and become unemployed. Is this correct or incorrect? What kept him going? Why didn’t he give up?

Apple Macintosh (1984-1994). What was his main advice to the Stanford University graduates?

IBM PC (1981-1990s). What was Steve’s final message? What does this mean?
 
 
 
Microsoft Windows, introduced in 1985. What do you or your friends think of Steve Jobs? Would you or your friends like to become like Steve Jobs?

Laptops (1980s-2000s). I know people who have followed their passions and became successful. Yes or no? Give examples of people who are doing what they love.

BlackBerry (early 2000s). Do you think Steve Jobs is right, or is he being too idealistic and impractical?

Apple iPhone in 2007. Have you found your life’s true calling? What is your passion? Can you become “successful” with what you love doing? How could you turn your passion into great success?

Google Android. What will happen in the future?