| 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. |
我今天很榮幸能夠參加你們的畢業典禮，斯坦福大學是世界頂級名校之一。我大學沒有畢業。說實話，此刻也許是我生命中最貼近大學畢業的體驗了。今天我想向你們講述我生活中的三個故事。不是什么大不了的事情，只是三個故事而已。 |
| The first story is about connecting the dots. |
第一個故事是關于如何把生命中的點點滴滴串連起來。 |
| 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? |
我在里德學院剛剛讀了六個月就退學了，不過在那之后我還經常去學校旁聽，又過了18個月左右才真正離開。我為什么要退學呢？ |
| 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. |
故事要從我還沒出生的時候講起。我的親生母親是一個年輕的未婚女研究生，她決定讓別人收養我。她堅持認為收養我的人起碼要有學士學位，所以提前安排好了一切，讓我一出世就能被一位律師和他的妻子收養。然而，我剛出生他們就改了主意想要個女孩。所以我的養父母突然在半夜接到電話：“我們這兒有一個計劃外的男嬰，你們想要他嗎？”他們回答道：“當然！”但是我親生母親隨后發現，我的養母從來沒有上過大學，我的養父甚至連高中文憑都沒有。于是她拒絕在收養文件上簽字。直到幾個月以后，我的養父母許諾將來一定會讓我讀大學，她才勉強同意。 |
| 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. |
在十七歲那年，我真的上了大學。但是我很愚蠢地選擇了一個幾乎和你們斯坦福大學一樣貴的學校。我的養父母都是藍領，他們把所有積蓄都花在了我的學費上面。而在六個月后，我發現這毫無意義。我不知道我真正想要做什么，我也不知道大學怎樣能夠幫助我找到答案。但是在這里，我幾乎花光了父母一輩子的積蓄。所以我決定退學，并說服自己一切都會好起來。不能否認，我當時確實非常的害怕，但是現在回頭看看，那的確是我這一生中最棒的一個決定。在我做出退學決定的那一刻，我終于可以不必去讀那些令我提不起絲毫興趣的課程了。然后我可以開始去修那些看起來有點意思的課程。 |
| 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: |
那段日子一點兒也不浪漫。我失去了我的宿舍，只能在朋友房間的地板上睡覺；我收集可樂瓶子去換押金，每個5美分，以此果腹；每周日的晚上，我需要步行七英里，穿過整個城鎮到克利須那神廟（位于紐約布魯克林下城）去吃每周一次的大餐，我喜歡那里的飯菜。我跟著我的直覺和好奇心走，遇到的很多東西，此后被證明是無價之寶。讓我給你們舉一個例子吧： |
| 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. |
當時里德學院開辦的美術字課程也許是全美最好的。在這個大學里面的每張海報、每個抽屜的標簽上面全都是漂亮的美術字。因為我退學了，不必去上正規的課程，所以我決定去參加這個課程，學學怎樣寫出漂亮的美術字。我學到了有襯線和無襯線字體，我學會了怎么樣在不同的字母組合之中改變空白間距，還有怎么樣才能做出最棒的印刷式樣。那種美好、歷史感和藝術的精妙，是科學永遠不能捕捉到的，我發現那實在是太迷人了。 |
