１st Story : Connecting the dots
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第18週 スティーブ-ジョブス １st Story : Connecting the dots |
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Steve Jobs' 2005 Stanford Commencement Address (with intro by President
John Hennessy)
アップルの創業者スティーブ ジョブスのスタンフォード大学卒業式（2005年）での祝辞。
人柄を反映して大変平易な言葉で話しています。小説のような波乱に満ちた人生を送った彼の人生観を聴いてみましょうです。
シャドウイングの教材にも適しています。
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.
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'd 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'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.
This was the start in my life.
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 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.
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 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.
None-of this had even- a hope of any practical application in my life.
But 10 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- that 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 backward 10 years later.
Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward.
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 would give you the confidenth to follow your heart, even when- it leads- you off the well-worn path.
And that will make all the difference.
２nd Story へ