Steve Jobs Commencement Speech at Stanford

I don't think I mentioned, but Steve Jobs is my idol, along with Bill James (a famous sports analyst). I listened to one of his speeches, and I was impressed. Here is my opinion and summary of the speech.

Steve Jobs Commencement Speech
at Stanford University

           

           

     Steve Jobs is currently the CEO of the Apple Company and The Pixar. He was never a college graduate, and didn’t have parents that were successful. His biological mother was an unwed college student.

     In this speech, Jobs mentions three stories in his life. The first one is about connecting the dots. When Steve Jobs was a 6-month student in the Reed College, where the college tuition was very expensive, he thought that the college was not important and had no idea why it was important. So he decided to drop out. Instead of taking required lessons, he took the classes that sounded interesting to him.

     The lesson he took was calligraphy. At the time, the Reed College was offering the best calligraphy in the country. After 10 years, when he was designing the Macintosh, it came clear to him-you cannot connect the dots looking forward, but looking backwards.

     The next story is about love and loss. His friend and Jobs started the company in his parents’ garage, but after 5 years, the Apple Company was grown to a 2-billion-dollar-company with 4000 employees. The company was going well without any huge problems, but suddenly, the company was falling. So the Board of Directors fired their CEO.

     After that, Jobs apologized to the Packard and Noyce. Jobs was back to work. Then, he founded the two companies named NeXT and Pixar. He decided to start his career over again, and everything went well.

     Then he says, “You have to find what you love to do. Don’t settle, keep finding.”

     The last story was about death. When he was 17 years old, he read a quote that said “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right,” and then every morning, he looked into the mirror and asked himself, if it was the last day of his life, he would want to do it. If the answer was no for the many days in a row, he would reschedule him.

      He had pancreatic cancer about a year ago. He was the closest to death. But his cancer was in a rare form, which could be cured. So he got surgery and now he is fine.

      No one wants to die, but they have to. Everyone’s time is limited; so don’t live the other one’s life and don’t waste time. You have to follow your heart and intuition. You find the thing that you like and can do well. The work is going to be a big part of your life, so live your life.                                                                                                        

     “Stay hungry, stay foolish.”