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。

　　第一个故事讲的是，把生命中的点连接起来。.

　　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.

　　那时，Reed大学开设可能是全国最好的书法课。校园里的每一张海报、每个抽屉上的每张标签，都是优美的手写体。因为退学后不用上那些常规课程，我决定去上书法课，学习如何写出优美的字。在那里，我学到了衬线字体和无衬线字体，学到了改变不同字母组合之间的间距，学到了版面设计如何才能优美。它是那样的美、富有历史感、艺术的精妙，科学不能捕捉到这些，我发现它太迷人了。

　　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.

　　这些东西，没有一件看上去对我的人生有实际的价值。但是十年后，当我们设计第一台Macintosh电脑的时候，它们都帮到我了。我们把它们都设计进了产品。那是第一台有着优美操作界面的电脑。如果我不曾在大学里旁听那门课，Mac电脑就不会有多种字形，或者按比例间隔的字体。因为后来Windows操作系统抄袭了Mac，那么很可能所有个人电脑都没有它们。如果我没有退学，我就不会旁听书法课，那么个人电脑可能就不会有它们现在的那样漂亮的界面了。当然，我还在大学里展望人生的时候，不可能把这些点都联系起来。但是十年后回头看，它们之间的联系真的是非常非常清楚。