‘You’ve got to find what you love,’ Steve Jobs says

Posted on April 23, 2008 by Kenyon Salo

“Author Note: I came across this from a friend who has been following my blog.  It fits so well into the context that I felt that more people should read this and experience what one of the greatest minds of our day and age did to get where he is now. 

So many times we hear this story title time and time again…”just do what you love”. 

How come so few of us actually do?

Thank you to my friend for sending this amazing speech to me, thank you to Steve Jobs and Standford Report/Standford News Service for the text.”

Option 1: The Video

Option 2: The Text Transcript

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.

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I’ve ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That’s it. No big deal. Just three stories.

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.

See the rest of the article at: Stanford Report, June 14, 2005

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One Response to “‘You’ve got to find what you love,’ Steve Jobs says”

  1. Daloo3a, on April 23rd, 2008 at 10:03 am Said:

    we don’t do what we love, for one reason and one reason only……….we don’t believe we can.
    It all comes down to us having low self-esteem and not having faith anymore..
    Years ago, our parents, their parents, they didn’t have these problems we have now..
    In Islam, Allah tells us, near the last day, good people will be thought of as evil, and evil people will be thought of as good.. people will turn against each other, this is all happening now… the good people, the people we once believed in , we doubt.. and then because of that, we doubt ourselves..
    If we would all sit back and THINK about what we want……we might actually do it.. IF we believe in ourselves…nice post ;)

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