A Flash Back To Steve Jobs's 2005 Stanford Commencement Speech

The real question is, do you have to go to college to be successful in life? Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, NeXT, and Pixar Animation took the stage on June 11^th of 2005 for the commencement speech of Stanford University. He set to explain 3 times of his life that really made him what he is today.

Jobs said the first part of his speech is about connecting the dots and set off talking about his biological mother. He said his biological mother wanted better for him and wanted to be adopted by a newlywed couple after college so he could have a good successful life. My parents got a call during the middle of the night with the doctor saying that there was a baby boy up for adoption and asked if they would like to be my parents. Jobs biological mom found out that his parents never went to college and refused to sign the adoptions papers but eventually did later down the road. Eventually she did when my parents promised that I would go to college.

After the seventeen years he went to college nearly expensive as Stanford and all of his parent’s savings were spent on college. He said that after he went to college for six months he didn’t see the point behind it. Jobs said “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”. After Jobs realized this he dropped out and trusted it would all work out in the end and clearly it did.

He went on to tell the graduates that he ended up living on his friend’s floor making no money and he would walk 7 miles to a church every Sunday so he could eat and he said he loved doing it. He began to describe after he dropped out he went to Reed college and had taken a calligraphy class that he really enjoyed. At the time he didn’t need to learn it but 10 years later down the road it helped him develop the first Macintosh computer.

The second point in his life was when he started Apple. What started from a 2-person business in his parents’ garage turned into a 2-million-dollar company that employed 4 million people. After Apple began his business partners' ideas, and his began to change and he ended up getting fired from Apple. For the next few months he said he felt like a failure and like he “dropped the baton when it was passed to him”. Jobs began to think that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could happen to him and it allowed him to enter the most creative period of his life. During that time, he made the companies NeXT and Pixar Animation. After all this he ended up selling NeXT to Apple and then he went back to Apple.

As Jobs went in to his last point he began to talk about how he got pancreatic cancer and the doctors told him he didn’t have long to live. Jobs said “The doctors told me to go home and get my affairs in order” and he went on to explain that it meant he had to go home and tell his family. Later that evening Jobs went into a biopsy and the doctors found out his cancer was curable and realized just how lucky he was. Jobs began to explain to the students that it was the closet time he has ever encountered death and it really opened his eyes with everything he did. The last thing Jobs said was “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.” And the graduates looked determined and happy when Jobs ended the speech with those words.