In class, we had to write about the commandment speech by Steve Jobs at Stanford University. Here is my article from March 26th:
Steve Jobs Commencement Speech at Stanford University
TUESDAY– On June 14, 2005, CEO of Apple, Steve Jobs, 50, let Stanford graduates know his three values in life and how it will reflect onto each and every one of them. He wants everyone to “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish”.
“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure — these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important”.
Before even knowing about college, he talks about his biological mother.
“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”.
17 years later, Steve Jobs got accepted into Reeds College in Portland Oregon.
With only being there for six months, Jobs decides to drop out and take a new path in life.
“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”
At the time, Steve Jobs didn’t tell his parents why he dropped out. Instead, he slept on friends floors, sold Coke bottles and ate food from what he sold with the Coke bottles.
Steve Jobs returned to Reeds College in 1974, but with bigger dreams in mind.
“I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and sans serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great”.
“I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents’ garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4,000 employees”.
Steve Wozniak, also known by his nickname “Woz”, is a technology entrepreneur, electronics engineer, computer programmer, philanthropist, and inventor. He is the other co-founder of Apple.
Jobs uses typography to create the first Macintosh computer on January 22, 1984
After a powerful struggle, other Apple CEO John Sculley fired Steve Jobs.
Before becoming the other CEO of Apple Computer Company, John Sculley was a part of Pepsi-Cola from 1967–82. At the age of 30, he became the youngest marketing vice- president
“I really didn’t know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down — that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me”.
“I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over”.
During the next five years, Jobs created the company NeXT, a company that is used in computer workstations for higher education and business use.
He also had another company named Pixar, in which he fell in love with an amazing woman who would become his wife, Laurene Powell Jobs”.
“I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life”.
“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 back 10 years later”.
About a year ago, Steve Jobs was diagnosed with cancer.
“This was the closest I’ve been to facing death, and I hope it’s the closest I get for a few more decades”.
“Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away”.
Jobs tells one last time to the graduates on how life is short, so use it while you’re young.
“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary”.