STEVE JOBS: Stanford Commencement
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A beautiful speech where Steve Jobs at the start off of college classes in Stanford, tells the students 3 simple stories.
He starts by telling all the students that he never graduated and that speech is probably the closest he ever got to graduation.
First story
Connecting the dots
He dropped out Reed College after the first six months, but he stayed around for another 18 months before finally quitting.
His mother, a single mom, gave him for adoption, because she wanted him to go to college.
He was about to be adopted by a lawyer when they decided they wanted a girl after all.
All of the sudden he was given to a family, where the husband had never graduated from high school and the wife never graduated from college!
When is biological mom became aware of the fact she refuse to sign the final papers for adoption. Yet they convinced her that they would put Steve to college no matter what... and so they did!
He chose a very expensive college to go to. His parents savings were disappearing to pay for that college. After 6 months he was not able to see the value in it.
He decided to drop out, he had a deep feeling that everything would turn out ok. It was scary though.
He began to go to classes he enjoyed instead of being bored to death by the ones he didn't care about.
He had a tough life: no money, no dorm room to sleep in (he had to crash on his friends' room floors, no decent meals and a lot of walking.
Reed had probably the best calligraphy classes in the country.
He learned all about what makes great typography great!
He couldn't image how this could influence whatever he would do in the future. But when he started designing the first Macintosh Computer "it all came back to me!" as he said.
No personal computer would have these kind of beautiful fonts ever, if it wasn't for this, as he states during the joke when he says "...and since windows copied the Mac it's likely no personal computer would have them".
Believe in what your heart is telling you. Believe that the dots will connect somewhere down the road even if that leads you off the well-worn path.
It's impossible to see if the dots are going to connect looking forwards, but it's so clear to see they have connected when you look backwards.
Second story
Love and loss
He was 20 years old when he and Woz started Apple at Job's parents garage.
In 10 years the 2 Steves turned the shy garage company into a 2 billion dollars one, with 4000 employees!
It had not been 1 year from their most beautiful creation, the Macintosh, since he was fired, he had turned 30 years old.
How can you get fired from a company you started?
It was devastating, so Steve says, when they kicked him out.
He had his doubts. He didn't know what to do... He even thought he might have screwed up badly after all... but the thing is that his feeling was that...
..."I still loved what I did!"
He decided to start over.
That bad thing... turned out to be the best thing ever... he could be a beginner again, instead of being crashed by the success pressure.
He entered one of the most creative period of his life by starting NeXT and also Pixar.
He also got married.
Apple bought NeXT and he ended coming back to Apple. The technology developed by NeXT was in the deep heart of Apple's Renaissance.
Third story
Death
He cites one of the most influential quotes in his life.
"If you live each day like if it was your last, some day you'll most certainly be right."
Remembering you are going to die makes you not fall into the trap of thinking you've got something to loose.
All things fall away in the face of death.
He talks with wits about his cancer problem.
Having looked into death's eyes he assures that no one wants to die, even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there!
He finally refers to the World Earth Catalog by Stewart Brand (in the 1960's, a "Google on paper"),
On the back cover of their final issue said: Stay Hungry! Stay Foolish!
Be you!
