乔布斯在斯坦福大学毕业典礼上的演讲
史蒂夫·乔布斯，1955年2月24日生于美国加利福尼亚州旧金山，美国发明家、企业家、美国苹果公司联合创办人。苹果之父乔布斯深深影响着我们。下面小编给大家带来乔布斯在斯坦福大学毕业典礼上的演讲，欢迎大家来阅读。
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.
今天，我很荣幸和大家在一起，参加这个世界上最好的大学之一的毕业典礼。我从没有大学毕业。说实话，这是迄今为止我最接近大学毕业的一天。今天我要向你们讲我人生中的三个故事。不是什么大事，只是三个小故事而已。
The first story is about connecting the dots.
第一个故事讲的是，把生命中的点连接起来。.
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?
我在Reed大学读了六个月之后就退学了，但是又在校园里旁听了十八个月左右，然后才真正离开。我为什么要退学呢?
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.
这要从我出生前讲起，我的生母是一个未婚怀孕的年轻大学生，她决定把肚子里的我送给别人抚养。她强烈希望收养我的家庭具有大学学历，所以在我还没出生的时候，一切都已经安排好了，一个律师和他的妻子收养我。但是意想不到的是，在我来到人世的那一刻，他们突然反悔了，决定只收养女孩。因此，在收养名单上排在后面的我的养父母，半夜接到电话："我们有一个不在计划之中的男孩，你们想要他吗?"他们回答："当然。"我的生母后来发现，我的养母没有大学毕业，我的养父没有高中毕业。她拒绝签署最终的收养协议。几个月后，我的养父母承诺送我上大学，她才同意签署协议。
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.
十七年后，我真的上大学了。但是，我很幼稚地选择了一所几乎与斯坦福大学一样贵的学校。我的养父母都是蓝领阶层，他们的所有积蓄都用来付我的学费。读了六个月以后，我看不到这样做的价值。我不知道自己的人生应该干什么，也不知道大学如何帮我找到答案。而且，如果我在大学里待下去，就会花光我的父母整整一生的积蓄。所以，我就决定退学了，相信这样行得通。那个时候，我确实担心害怕，但是回过头来看，那是我的最佳决策之一。一旦我退学了，就能不上那些我毫无兴趣的必修课，可以开始旁听那些我有兴趣的课了。
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:
这件事也有艰苦的一面。我没有宿舍了，就睡在朋友家的地板上。退回可乐瓶可以拿到5美分，我把它们积累起来换东西吃。每个星期天晚上，我步行7英里穿过城市，到教会吃一顿免费的丰盛晚餐。但是，我还是心甘情愿。跟着自己的好奇心和直觉走，我误打误撞遇到的许多东西，日后都被证明是无价之宝。我给你们举一个例子。
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 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.