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This is a prepared text of the Commencement address delivered by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, on June 12, 2005.

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.

Today I want to tell you three stories from my life.

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.

This was the start of my life.

And 17 years later I did go to college.

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.

Commencement at Stanford, 2005

Preface

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