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.
这是苹果电脑公司兼皮克斯动画公司的CEO史蒂夫·乔布斯于2005年6月12日在斯坦佛大学毕业典礼上作的极富启发意义的演讲。

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?
在呆了六个月之后，我便从里德学院辍学了，但在那之后，我以旁听者的身份在学院里又呆了18个月才真正离开大学。那么，我为什么要辍学呢？

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. 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.
话还要从我出生之前说起。我的生母是一个年轻的未婚大学毕业生，她决定把我送去别人家收养，并坚持认为，收养我的人必须是大学毕业生。在我出生前，所有关于收养我的事宜都已经安排妥当了。我本该被一个律师和他的妻子收养，但等到我真正出生了，他和他的妻子却在最后时刻决定他们真正想要的是个女孩。所以，我现在的养父母（他们当时在等候名单上）在半夜接到一通电话，“我们有一个意外出生的男孩，你们想收养他吗？”他们回答说，“当然想。”但后来，我的生母发现了我的养母不是大学毕业生，而我的养父甚至连高中都没有毕业，于是她拒绝在最终的收养文件上签字。几个月后，她才最后妥协了，因为我的养父母保证以后会送我去上大学。

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. 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.
十七年过去了，我真地上了大学。但我却很天真地挑了一个和斯坦福大学一样学费昂贵的学校，光是学费就花掉了我养父母辛辛苦苦积攒多年的积蓄，他们只是工薪阶层。在学校待了六个月后，我看不出这学费花得值得。我不知道我的人生计划是什么，也不知道大学能够如何帮助我找到这一目标。而且，我在学校念书会花掉养父母一生的积蓄。于是，我决定辍学，并坚信这是一个正确的决定。当时，这是一个相当冒险的举动，但今天回头看看，那是我做出的最明智的决定之一。辍学之后，我马上逃离了那些我对之乏味的课程，转而开始旁听那些看起来很有趣的科目。

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:
但事情也并非全是美好的。辍学后我就没有寝室了，因此，我睡在朋友房间的地板上。为了有钱吃饭，我把可乐瓶子退回商店，只为了那5美分的押金，每周星期天晚上，为了吃一顿好的大餐，我还要走7英里的路，到城镇另一头的印度哈而克利须那寺。但我热爱这种生活。而且，许多我出于好奇和直觉而偶然去做的事，后来也变证明是非常值得的。我来为你们举一个例子：

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. 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.
当时，里德学院提供的恐怕是全国最棒的书法教育。走在校园里，每一幅贴在墙上的海报，每一张抽屉上的标签，都是漂漂亮亮的手写体。由于我辍了学，不用再去上常规课程，我便决定报名参加书法班，学写一手漂亮的字。在班里，我学到了灯芯体和衬线体，在不同字母组合间的间隙的变化，以及如何才能让印刷字体美观。那种美妙、古朴、艺术、微妙，是科学所不能达到的。我对之着了迷。

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. 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.
在当时看来，这些事物仿佛于我的人生没有任何实际的应用。但十年之后，我在设计第一台苹果电脑时，它们都重新浮现在我的脑海里，我们在设计电脑时好好地运用了它们，使我们的苹果电脑成为了第一台精致排版的电脑。如果我当时没有去旁听书法班，苹果电脑就不会有多字体选择，字母间也不会有匀称的间隙。而且，由于Windows系统是借鉴了Mac系统的产物，如今所有的个人电脑都没有多字体选择和美妙的字母间隙，这也是有可能的。这些事情就像一个一个的点。当我还在学校时，是不可能看得出这些未来的来龙去脉的。但十年之后，再回头来看，一切就很明显了。

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.
你们也是一样，现在要将未来看透是不可能的，只有在将来，事物间的联系才会显现出来。因此，你们必须要相信，现在所学的东西总是能与未来联系起来的。而且，你们还得坚信一种东西，不管是直觉也好，命运也罢，甚至人生，或是因果循环，无论什么都好。我的这种信仰从来没有让我失望，我的生命中的所有转折都是它造成的。