视频地址：
https://www.bilibili.com/video/av7300325?from=search&seid=9973964268915197677 原文：
https://www.jianshu.com/p/bb3ca7059747 I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world.Truth be told,I never graduated from college，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.
今天，我很荣幸能参加你们的毕业典礼，斯坦福大学是世界上最好的大学之一。我从来没有从大学毕业。说真的，今天也许是在我的生命中离大学毕业最近的一天了。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Reed大学读了六个月之后就退学了,但是在十八个月以后——我真正地作出退学决定之前，我还经常去学校。那么，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.
故事从我出生的时候讲起。我的生母当时是一个年轻的,尚未结婚的研究生，她决定让别人收养我。她十分想让我被大学毕业生收养。所以在我出生的时候，她已经做好了一切的准备工作，我将被一位律师和他的妻子收养。但是她没有料到，当我出生之后，律师夫妇突然决定他们想要的是一个女孩。
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.
所以我的养父母(他们在候选名单上)突然在半夜接到了一个电话:“我们现在这儿有一个亲生父母无法抚养的男婴,你们想要他吗?”他们回答道:“当然!”但是我亲生母亲随后发现，我的养母大学没毕业,我的父亲甚至高中没毕业。她拒绝签这个收养合同。只是在几个月以后,我的父母答应她一定要让我上大学,那个时候她才同意。
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.
在十七岁那年,我真的上了大学。但是我很愚蠢的选择了一个几乎和你们斯坦福大学一样贵的学校, 而我父母只是蓝领阶层，我的学费几乎要花光了他们所有积蓄。而六个月后, 我却看不到其中的价值所在。我不知道我想要在生命中做什么,我也不知道大学能怎么样帮助我找到答案。
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.
但是在这里，我几乎花光了我父母这一辈子的所有积蓄。所以我决定要退学,并且相信一切会有办法的。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曾经做过的最棒的一个决定。在我退学的那一刻, 我终于可以不必去读那些令我提不起丝毫兴趣的课程了，然后我还可以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:
但是事实并不是那么浪漫。我没有了宿舍住,所以我只能睡在朋友房间的地板上,我去捡可乐瓶子，以五分一个的价格卖掉，这样我就可以有点钱买吃的, 在每个星期天的晚上,我会走七英里的路程，到城市另一端的Hare Krishna寺庙(注：位于纽约Brooklyn下城),可以吃上每星期唯一一顿饱饭。我爱圣餐。我跟着我的直觉和好奇心走, 遇到了很多东西,此后被证明是无价之宝。我来举个例子吧：
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.
在那时，Reed大学提供全美最好的美术字课程。在这个大学里，每张海报, 每个抽屉的每个标签，全都是漂亮的手写美术字。因为我退学了, 不用去上那些常规的课程, 所以我决定去参加这个课程，去学学怎样写出漂亮的美术字。
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.
我学到了san serif 和serif字体, 我学会了怎么样在不同的字母组合之中改变空格的长度, 还有怎么样才能作出最棒的印刷式样。那是一种科学永远不能捕捉到的、美丽的、历史性的艺术精妙, 我发现那实在是太美妙了。
None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts.
当时这些东西好像都没有什么会在我生命中实际应用的可能。但是十年之后,当我们在设计第一台Macintosh电脑的时候,它就回归到我身边。我把当时我学的那些家伙全都设计进了Mac。那是第一台使用了漂亮的印刷字体的电脑。如果我在大学里从没有学那门课，麦金塔电脑就不会有多种字体或者适当分隔的字体。
And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.
因为微软都是抄Mac电脑的，很可能在个人电脑上都不会有这些了。如果我没有退学，那我就不会旁听这门书法课，然后个人电脑就不会像现在这样有神奇的排印术了。当然在大学的时候，我还不可能把未来的点点滴滴串连起来,但是当我十年后回顾这一切的时候,真的豁然开朗了。
Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something - your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.（此处有缺失待补充）
再次说明下,你不可能将未来的片断串连起来;你只能在回顾的时候将点点滴滴串连起来。所以你必须相信这些片断会以某种方式在未来的某一天串连起来。你必须要相信某些东西：你的勇气、命运、生命、因缘，随便是什么。这种方法从来没有令我失望(let me down)，只是让我的生命更加地与众不同。