Mr.

This is the text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple

Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005, to the

graduating class at Stanford.

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.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

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?

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.

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

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