| 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. |
我今天很荣幸能够参加你们的毕业典礼，斯坦福大学是世界顶级名校之一。我大学没有毕业。说实话，此刻也许是我生命中最贴近大学毕业的体验了。今天我想向你们讲述我生活中的三个故事。不是什么大不了的事情，只是三个故事而已。 |
| The first story is about connecting the dots. |
第一个故事是关于如何把生命中的点点滴滴串连起来。 |
| 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? |
我在里德学院刚刚读了六个月就退学了，不过在那之后我还经常去学校旁听，又过了18个月左右才真正离开。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. |
故事要从我还没出生的时候讲起。我的亲生母亲是一个年轻的未婚女研究生，她决定让别人收养我。她坚持认为收养我的人起码要有学士学位，所以提前安排好了一切，让我一出世就能被一位律师和他的妻子收养。然而，我刚出生他们就改了主意想要个女孩。所以我的养父母突然在半夜接到电话：“我们这儿有一个计划外的男婴，你们想要他吗？”他们回答道：“当然！”但是我亲生母亲随后发现，我的养母从来没有上过大学，我的养父甚至连高中文凭都没有。于是她拒绝在收养文件上签字。直到几个月以后，我的养父母许诺将来一定会让我读大学，她才勉强同意。 |
| 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. |
在十七岁那年，我真的上了大学。但是我很愚蠢地选择了一个几乎和你们斯坦福大学一样贵的学校。我的养父母都是蓝领，他们把所有积蓄都花在了我的学费上面。而在六个月后，我发现这毫无意义。我不知道我真正想要做什么，我也不知道大学怎样能够帮助我找到答案。但是在这里，我几乎花光了父母一辈子的积蓄。所以我决定退学，并说服自己一切都会好起来。不能否认，我当时确实非常的害怕，但是现在回头看看，那的确是我这一生中最棒的一个决定。在我做出退学决定的那一刻，我终于可以不必去读那些令我提不起丝毫兴趣的课程了。然后我可以开始去修那些看起来有点意思的课程。 |
| 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: |
那段日子一点儿也不浪漫。我失去了我的宿舍，只能在朋友房间的地板上睡觉；我收集可乐瓶子去换押金，每个5美分，以此果腹；每周日的晚上，我需要步行七英里，穿过整个城镇到克利须那神庙（位于纽约布鲁克林下城）去吃每周一次的大餐，我喜欢那里的饭菜。我跟着我的直觉和好奇心走，遇到的很多东西，此后被证明是无价之宝。让我给你们举一个例子吧： |
| 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. |
当时里德学院开办的美术字课程也许是全美最好的。在这个大学里面的每张海报、每个抽屉的标签上面全都是漂亮的美术字。因为我退学了，不必去上正规的课程，所以我决定去参加这个课程，学学怎样写出漂亮的美术字。我学到了有衬线和无衬线字体，我学会了怎么样在不同的字母组合之中改变空白间距，还有怎么样才能做出最棒的印刷式样。那种美好、历史感和艺术的精妙，是科学永远不能捕捉到的，我发现那实在是太迷人了。 |
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