Steve Jobs vs. University
Motivational video about the life of one of the most successful people
In 2005, Steve Jobs went to Stanford University and spoke at the graduation ceremony for students. He defines his life in three short stories for students.
Steve Jobs: I am very happy to be at your graduation ceremony today, studying at one of the best universities in the world.
I never graduated from college.
Today I want to tell you the story of my life.
It’s not very long, just three short stories.
Summary of motivation from this speech
This motivational video is a summary of a section of Jobs’ speech, that we must make decisions in life, go after learning things that can add something to us, pursue our curiosities, even if it means bypassing college …
The complete text of this speech
Part One: “Connecting seemingly unrelated events in life.“
Six months after starting college at REED College, I intended to drop out, but about a year and a half after dropping out, I would come and go to college.
Well, now I want to tell you why I dropped out of school. My life and struggle began before I was born. My biological mother was a single college student who decided to put me up for adoption so that a family could adopt me.
She strongly believed that a family willing to adopt me should have a college education and had prepared everything for it.
*Additional information
Real names of Steve Jobs’ mother and father: Joanne Schieble (later known as Joan Simpson) and Abdulfattah Jandali
A lawyer and his wife had agreed to take me from my mother after my birth, and everything was ready until after my birth, this family said they didn’t want a boy and wanted a girl instead. So it happened that my current parents received a phone call in the middle of the night asking if they were willing to adopt me, and they said definitely. My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and my father had never finished high school. My birth mother was not willing to sign the adoption papers until they promised to send me to college when I grew up.
*Additional information
Names of Steve Jobs’ adoptive parents: Paul and Clara Jobs
So seventeen years later, I entered college, and because I had little information at the time, I chose a college whose tuition was almost equivalent to Stanford University’s, and I quickly spent my parents’ life savings on tuition. After six months, I realized that college was not beneficial to me.
I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and how college was going to help me. Instead of spending my parents’ life savings, I dropped out, but I believed that everything would work out. At first, I was a little scared, but now that I look back, I see that it was one of the best decisions of my life. The moment I dropped out of school, instead of going to classes I had no interest in, I started doing things I really enjoyed. Life was not easy for me at that time. I didn’t have a room and slept on the floor of a friend’s room. I would return empty Pepsi cans for five cents each to buy food.
Sometimes I would walk seven miles to have a free meal at the church. I liked their food. I embarked on a journey due to my curiosity and inner ambiguity, which turned into a valuable experience. Reed College was offering one of the best calligraphy teachings in the country at that time. All the university posters were beautifully calligraphed, and since I had dropped out of my regular program, I took calligraphy classes. Their style was very interesting, beautiful, artistic, and historical, and I enjoyed it very much. I had no hope that calligraphy classes would play a role in my future professional life, but ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, all my calligraphy skills came back to my mind, and I used them in Macintosh graphic design. The Macintosh was the first computer with artistic and beautiful computer fonts.
If I hadn’t taken those calligraphy classes back then, Mac would never have artistic fonts now. Also, because Windows copied Mac design, probably no computer would have these fonts. Well, you see, when a person looks to the future, the impact of events may not be clear, but when they look at the past, they realize the connection of these events. Remember, you must believe in something, in your courage, your destiny, your life, or anything else. This is what has never disappointed me and has created many changes in my life.
Part Two: “My second story is about love and loss.”
Video: Love What You Do | Steve Jobs
I was delighted to find the things I loved so quickly. My colleague, Wozniak, and I started Apple in my parents’ garage when I was only twenty years old. We worked very hard, and in ten years, Apple turned into a two billion dollar company with about four thousand employees. We had introduced our most interesting creation to the market; the Macintosh.
A year after the launch of the Macintosh, when I was only thirty years old, the Apple board of directors fired me from the company. How could someone be fired from a company they founded, very simple. The company had grown, and we had hired someone we thought would be good at running the company. Everything was going very well until after a year or two, I disagreed with him about the future strategy of the company, and the board supported him, and I was formally fired.
I felt like I had lost everything I had achieved in my life. For a few months, I didn’t know what to do. I was officially defeated, and I was no longer in Silicon Valley, but a feeling began to grow within me. A feeling that I really liked, and the events of Apple hadn’t changed it much. The feeling of starting over. Maybe I didn’t realize back then that being fired from Apple was one of the best events of my life. The weight of success had been replaced by the lightness of a fresh start, and I was completely free. That period of my life was full of creativity. Over the next five years, I founded a company called NeXT and met an extraordinary woman whom I later married named Lauren.
Pixar created the world’s first computer-animated film tool called Toy Story, which is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In an extraordinary turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, which led me to return to Apple and the technology developed at NeXT revolutionized Apple. I started a very good life with my wife, Lauren. If I hadn’t been fired from Apple, none of these events might have happened. This event was like bitter medicine given to a patient, but the patient really needs it. Sometimes life hits you like a brick to the head, but don’t lose your faith. I am sure the only thing that made me always move forward in my life was that I was doing something I really loved.
