乔布斯的斯坦福演讲

This is the text of the Commencement addreby Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005.

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, I never graduated from college. 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.

斯坦福是世界上最好的大学之一，今天能参加各位的毕业典礼，我备感荣幸。(尖叫声)我从来没有从大学毕业，说句实话，此时算是我离大学毕业最近的一刻。(笑声)今天，我想告诉你们我生命中的三个故事，并非什么了不得的大事件，只是三个小故事而已。

The first story is about connecting the dots.

第一个故事关于串起生命中的点点滴滴

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?

退学是我这一生所做出的最正确的决定之一。我在里德大学待了6个月就退学了，但之后仍作为旁听生混了18个月后才最终离开。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 pa-pe-rs. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

故事要从我出生之前开始说起。我的生母是一名年轻的未婚妈妈，当时她还是一所大学的在读研究生，于是决定把我送给其他人收养。她坚持我应该被一对念过大学的夫妇收养，所以在我出生的时候，她已经为我被一个律师和他的太太收养做好了所有的准备。但在最后一刻，这对夫妇改了主意，决定收养一个女孩。候选名单上的另外一对夫妇，也就是我的养父母，在一天午夜接到了一通电话：“ 有一个不请自来的男婴，你们想收养吗?” 他们回答：“ 当然想。” 事后，我的生母才发现我的养母根本就没有从大学毕业，而我的养父甚至连高中都没有毕业，所以她拒绝签署最后的收养文件，直到几个月后，我的养父母保证会把我送到大学，她的态度才有所转变。

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I na-iv-ely chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-claparents' 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.

17 年之后，我真上了大学。但因为年幼无知，我选择了一所和斯坦福一样昂贵的大学，(笑声)我的父母都是工人阶级，他们倾其所有资助我的学业。在6个月之后，我发现自己完全不知道这样念下去究竟有什么用。当时，我的人生漫无目标，也不知道大学对我能起到什么帮助，为了念书，还花光了父母毕生的积蓄，所以我决定退学。我相信车到山前必有路。当时作这个决定的时候非常害怕，但现在回头去看，这是我这一生所做出的最正确的决定之一。(笑声)从我退学那一刻起，我就再也不用去上那些我毫无兴趣的必修课了，我开始旁听那些看来比较有意思的'科目。

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 cent; deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles acrotown 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 pricelelater 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 clato 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.

这件事情做起来一点都不浪漫。因为没有自己的宿舍，我只能睡在朋友房间的地板上;可乐瓶的押金是5 分钱，我把瓶子还回去好用押金买吃的;在每个周日的晚上，我都会步行7英里穿越市区，到HareKrishna教堂吃一顿大餐，我喜欢那儿的食物。我跟随好奇心和直觉所做的事情，事后证明大多数都是极其珍贵的经验。我举一个例子：那个时候，里德大学提供了全美国最好的书法教育。整个校园的每一张海报，每一个抽屉上的标签，都是漂亮的手写体。由于已经退学，不用再去上那些常规的课程，于是我选择了一个书法班，想学学怎么写出一手漂亮字。在这个班上，我学习了各种字体，如何改变不同字体组合之间的字间距，以及如何做出漂亮的版式。那是一种科学永远无法捕捉的充满美感、历史感和艺术感的微妙，我发现这太有意思了。