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。