生活中的点滴：乔布斯的第一个故事 ——乔布斯

（单词翻译）

Connecting dots of my life——The first story of Jobs——Jobs

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universitiesin the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to acollege graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Justthree 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 foranother 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduatestudent, and she decided¹ to put me up for adoption² . She felt very strongly that I should beadopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyerand his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanteda girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "Wehave an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological motherlater found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had nevergraduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a fewmonths later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively³ chose a college that was almost asexpensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings⁴ were being spent on mycollege tuition . After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to dowith my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spendingall of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that itwould all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the bestdecisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn'tinterest me and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn't all romantic . I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, Ireturned coke bottles for the 5 deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles acrosstown every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. Andmuch of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be pricelesslater on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy⁵ instruction in the country.

Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer was beautifully handcalligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided totake a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, aboutvarying the amount of space between different letter combinations , about what makes greattypography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically⁶ subtle in a way that science can'tcapture , and I found it fascinating .

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, whenwe were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it allinto the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on thatsingle course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionallyspaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it's likely that no personal computer wouldhave 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 wasimpossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clearlooking backwards⁷ ten years later.

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them lookingbackwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have totrust in something—your gut⁸ , destiny , life, karma , whatever. This approach has never let medown, and it has made all the difference in my life.

参考译文

生活中的点滴——乔布斯的第一个故事

——乔布斯

今天，我很荣幸能来到贵校这所世界顶尖大学，参加你们的毕业典礼。我没有念完大学。老实说，今天是我一生中最接近大学毕业的日子。今天我想告诉你们我生活中的三个故事，仅此而已。不是什么大不了的事情，只是三个故事。

第一个故事是串联起生活的点滴

我在里德大学读了六个月之后就退学了，但之后我又像在校生一样读了十八个月左右才彻底退学。那么，我为什么要退学呢？

这要从我出生前讲起。我母亲生我的时候还是一个年轻、未婚的在校研究生，所以她决定让别人收养我。她十分希望收养者是大学毕业生，并办妥了一切，我出生后就会由一位律师和他的妻子收养。意外的是，我出生后，那对夫妻突然变卦，说他们其实想要一个女孩。于是，当时还在等待名单上的我的养父母在半夜接到了一个电话，问他们说：“我们这儿有一个未婚出生的男婴，你们想要他吗？”他们回答：“当然要。”但是，随后我的生母发现，我的养母从来没有上过大学，我的养父甚至连高中都没读完。她拒绝签收养合同。

几个月以后，我的养父母承诺一定会让我上大学，她才让步。

十七年之后，我真的上了大学。但是，我很幼稚地选择了一所学费几乎和斯坦福一样贵的学校。我父母是工薪阶层，他们倾尽积蓄，支付了我的学费。过了六个月，我却看不到这笔钱的价值。我不知道我想要做什么，也不知道大学会怎样帮我找到答案，而我却在浪费着我父母一辈子的积蓄。所以我决定退学，并坚信这是个正确的决定。我当时非常害怕，但是现在回头看，那是我一生中最棒的决定之一。一退学，我就可以不去读那些我不感兴趣的必修课，并开始上那些看起来很有意思的课程。

但是，这并没有多浪漫。我没有宿舍，只能睡在朋友房间的地板上。我收集别人喝完的可乐瓶子，来换5美分买吃的。每周日晚上，我都会步行七英里，穿越城市到HareKrishna神庙，去饱餐一顿。我喜欢那里的饭菜。后来我发现，先前追随好奇和直觉而经历的种种遭遇其实是无价之宝。我给你们举个例子：

当时，里德大学的书法课也许是全国最好的。校园里的每一张海报，抽屉上的每一张标签，全都是漂亮的手写字。因为我退学了，不用去上常规课程，所以我决定去上书法课，学学怎样写。我学会了serif和san serif字体，学会了怎样调整字母组合的间距，学会了怎样做出最棒的印刷字体式样。那种美丽、典雅和精雕细琢，是科学无法体现的，它令我着迷。

当时，在我的生命中，这些东西一点实际应用的希望都没有。但是十年后，当我们设计第一台Macintosh电脑的时候，就完全不同了。我们把当时学的那些东西全都融入进了Mac的设计中。那是第一台使用漂亮字体的电脑。如果我当时没有去上那门课，Mac就绝不会有这些丰富多彩、赏心悦目的字体。Windows只是纯粹地抄袭Mac，所以，我们可以说，除了Mac，没有一台个人电脑会有这些字体。如果我当时没有退学，我就不可能去上这门书法课，那么个人电脑可能也就不会有如今这么美妙的字体了。当然，我在大学的时候，还不可能先知先觉地把这些点滴串联起来。但是，十年后回顾这一切的时候，却豁然开朗，无比清晰。

再说一遍，你在向前看的时候，不可能将这些点滴串联起来，只有在往回看的时候可以。所以你必须坚信，这些点滴一定会在将来的某一天以某种形式串联起来。你必须执着于某些东西——你的勇气、命运、生命、因果等等。这个想法屡试不爽，而且还是我生命中一切改变的源泉。