Steve Jobs was a
highly successful "American businessman,
designer and inventor" and "he is best known as the co-founder,
chairman, and chief executive officer of Apple Inc." Steve Jobs has had many lasting impacts
on society through his character and renovating technology. Steve Jobs
"was widely recognized as a charismatic pioneer of the personal computer
revolution and for his influential career in the
computer and consumer electronics fields."
He was a great man and it was a tradgedy to loose him on "October 5,
2001".
Before he passed
"Steve Jobs delivered [an inspirational speech] to Stanford University's
class of 2005." Within his speech he reflects on three stories from his
own life. His first story, chronologically, starts from the beginning of his
life, "It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young,
unwed 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." He
basically states that his mother did not want him for herself because she was
uneducated and wouldn't have been able to provide for her son the way that
another erudite set of parents would. I agree with Jobs in saying that yes
having a well functioning and financially stable family does have its perks and
would help with giving the child the opportunities generally needed to succeed.
But right before he explain his situation he states, "I dropped out of
Reed College after the first six months, but then stayed around as a drop-in
for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why'd I drop out?"
Basically blaming his situation on the reason for him "dropping out".
I do not agree with that. Although like I stated before having a well financed
and intelligent family helps, its not all that is needed. Many highly
successful people have risen from the slums and changed the world, while many
wealthy people have sat around and rotted in their drunken corpses not making
one positive change to the world. With all that money you would assume they
would have some decency to spend it on a good cause or maybe go to school and
learn a few things so they can become a scholar and change the world that way
rather than flaunting their money around and say "here". But beside
the point, we cannot choose the cards we are dealt but we can choose what
we do with them. And I was kind of disappointed at the way he started off his
speech not taking responsibility or humbly stating what he had accomplished. It
seemed to me like he was even disappointed in a way of what he has done. He is
a great man and he didn't need a fancy family to get him to where he was, and
he should have said that- in a most modest way possible.
He then continues,
"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've got an unexpected baby boy. Do you want
him? They said: Of course. My biological mother found out later 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 go to college. This was
the start in my life." his biological parents were promised that their son
would find his way to college, he did at 17 leaving to start another chapter of
his life. But he didn't use the opportunities he was given in a sense , he left
all the things he was given- college- behind and went on to do his own thing.
Of course it worked for him...but what if it hadn't? Would he have been paying
for a mistake? Or what if he had stayed throughout all of college? Would he
have been more successful? Less successful? We can never know. Buit what we do
know is Steve Jobs was given a crappy group of cards, but he was special enough
to turn them in to something magnificent. And I was very happy to see that he
reflected on his luck and opportunity for the passion he had found when
partnering with a college in the Apple corp, "My second story is about
love and loss. I was lucky, I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I
started Apple in my parents' garage when I was 20."
Quote I loved:
"Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition."
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