喬布斯斯坦福大學畢業(yè)演講

　　蘋果創(chuàng)始人斯蒂夫·喬布斯在斯坦福畢業(yè)典禮上的演講。從對電腦的癡迷到摯愛，25歲就成為億萬富翁的背后，是努力和執(zhí)著。

　　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.

　　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?

　　今天，我很榮幸和大家在一起，參加這個世界上最好的大學之一的畢業(yè)典禮。我從沒有大學畢業(yè)。說實話，這是迄今為止我最接近大學畢業(yè)的一天。今天我要向你們講我人生中的三個故事。不是什么大事，只是三個小故事而已。

　　第一個故事講的是，把生命中的點連接起來。.

　　我在Reed大學讀了六個月之后就退學了，但是又在校園里旁聽了十八個月左右，然后才真正離開。我為什么要退學呢?

　　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.

　　這要從我出生前講起，我的生母是一個未婚懷孕的年輕大學生，她決定把肚子里的我送給別人撫養(yǎng)。她強烈希望收養(yǎng)我的家庭具有大學學歷，所以在我還沒出生的時候，一切都已經(jīng)安排好了，一個律師和他的妻子收養(yǎng)我。但是意想不到的是，在我來到人世的那一刻，他們突然反悔了，決定只收養(yǎng)女孩。因此，在收養(yǎng)名單上排在后面的我的養(yǎng)父母，半夜接到電話："我們有一個不在計劃之中的男孩，你們想要他嗎?"他們回答："當然。"我的生母后來發(fā)現(xiàn)，我的養(yǎng)母沒有大學畢業(yè)，我的養(yǎng)父沒有高中畢業(yè)。她拒絕簽署最終的收養(yǎng)協(xié)議。幾個月后，我的養(yǎng)父母承諾送我上大學，她才同意簽署協(xié)議。

　　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，我真的上大學了。但是，我很幼稚地選擇了一所幾乎與斯坦福大學一樣貴的學校。我的養(yǎng)父母都是藍領(lǐng)階層，他們的所有積蓄都用來付我的學費。讀了六個月以后，我看不到這樣做的價值。我不知道自己的人生應(yīng)該干什么，也不知道大學如何幫我找到答案。而且，如果我在大學里待下去，就會花光我的父母整整一生的積蓄。所以，我就決定退學了，相信這樣行得通。那個時候，我確實擔心害怕，但是回過頭來看，那是我的最佳決策之一。一旦我退學了，就能不上那些我毫無興趣的必修課，可以開始旁聽那些我有興趣的課了。

　　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:

　　這件事也有艱苦的一面。我沒有宿舍了，就睡在朋友家的地板上。退回可樂瓶可以拿到5美分，我把它們積累起來換東西吃。每個星期天晚上，我步行7英里穿過城市，到教會吃一頓免費的豐盛晚餐。但是，我還是心甘情愿。跟著自己的好奇心和直覺走，我誤打誤撞遇到的許多東西，日后都被證明是無價之寶。我給你們舉一個例子。

　　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 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.

　　那時，Reed大學開設(shè)可能是全國最好的書法課。校園里的每一張海報、每個抽屜上的每張標簽，都是優(yōu)美的手寫體。因為退學后不用上那些常規(guī)課程，我決定去上書法課，學習如何寫出優(yōu)美的字。在那里，我學到了襯線字體和無襯線字體，學到了改變不同字母組合之間的間距，學到了版面設(shè)計如何才能優(yōu)美。它是那樣的美、富有歷史感、藝術(shù)的精妙，科學不能捕捉到這些，我發(fā)現(xiàn)它太迷人了。

　　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, its 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.

　　這些東西，沒有一件看上去對我的人生有實際的價值。但是十年后，當我們設(shè)計第一臺Macintosh電腦的時候，它們都幫到我了。我們把它們都設(shè)計進了產(chǎn)品。那是第一臺有著優(yōu)美操作界面的電腦。如果我不曾在大學里旁聽那門課，Mac電腦就不會有多種字形，或者按比例間隔的字體。因為后來Windows操作系統(tǒng)抄襲了Mac，那么很可能所有個人電腦都沒有它們。如果我沒有退學，我就不會旁聽書法課，那么個人電腦可能就不會有它們現(xiàn)在的那樣漂亮的界面了。當然，我還在大學里展望人生的時候，不可能把這些點都聯(lián)系起來。但是十年后回頭看，它們之間的聯(lián)系真的是非常非常清楚。

　　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.

　　再說一遍，你展望人生的時候，不可能把這些點連起來;只有當你回顧人生的時候，才能發(fā)現(xiàn)它們之間的聯(lián)系。所以你必須有信心，相信這些點總會以某種方式，對你的未來產(chǎn)生影響。你必須相信一些事情----你的勇氣、命運、人生、緣分等等。這樣做從未令我失望，反而決定了我人生中所有與眾不同之處。