Steve Jobs Gives Somber Advice to College Graduates
Animation Businessman Talks Jobs
"Right now, the new is you. But someday, not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away," he warned the 5,000 graduating students. "Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life."As Jobs' profile becomes wider known thanks to the huge success of the Ipod, his biography is becoming better known as well. According to legend, Jobs' mother, who gave him up for adoption as a baby, had one wish - for him to go to college. But, he told the students at Stanford, he dropped out of Reed College in Portland, Ore., after just eight months because his tuition had become a burden on his working-class parents and the required courses seemed irrelevant.
Animation College?
From then on, Jobs only attended classes that interested him, living off the nickels he picked up by returning recyclable soda bottles and free meals from a Hare Krishna temple. Intrigued by calligraphy, he took a calligraphy class, though he thought at the time that he would never apply it. But when he designed the first Macintosh computer, he incorporated that unusual knowledge."If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on that calligraphy class and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do," he said. "Believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart, even when it leads you off the well-worn path, and that will make all the difference."
The college speech came during a week that Jobs also let it be known that his company Pixar animation (producer of such hits as Finding Nemo and Toy Story) was back in negotiations with Disney, the company Jobs previously swore never to partner with again.
