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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.
17年后，我真的上了大学。但是我很天真，选择了一所几乎和斯坦福大学一样贵的学校，我那工薪阶层的养父母把全部积蓄都用来支付我的大学学费。六个月后，我看不到上大学有什么价值。我不知道自己一生中想做什么，我也不知道大学怎样帮我找到答案。而此时，我正在花光父母一辈子攒下的钱。所以我决定退学，并且相信这是个不错的决定。在那时候，这样做多少有些心里没底，但是回过头来看，那是我至今做出的最正确的决定之一。从我退学的那一刻起，我可以不用选学那些我不感兴趣的必修课，可以去旁听那些看上去有趣的课程。
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:
那个时候并非事事如意。我没有了宿舍，因此只能睡在朋友房间的地板上；我退还可乐瓶，换回5美分押金买东西吃；每个星期天的晚上，我总是走上七英里，穿城到哈瑞·奎师那（Hare Krishna）礼拜堂去，吃上一顿每周一次的大餐。我喜欢这样。我凭着好奇心和直觉所做的大多数事情，结果被证明是无价之宝。让我给你们举一个例子：
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.
那时候，里德学院开设的书法课可能是全美国最好的。校园里的所有海报、所有抽屉标签上的字都写得漂漂亮亮 。由于我已经退学，不用上常规课程，我决定选一门书法课，学学怎样写好字。我学习了serif（衬线字）和san serif（非衬线字）字体，学会了根据不同的字母组合调整间距，懂得了了不起的活版印刷之所以了不起的原因。书法课真是太美妙了，具有历史性和科学无法捕捉的艺术上的精妙，我觉得它趣味无穷。
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.
这些对我的一生本应该是毫无实际用处的，可是十年后，在我们设计第一台麦金塔(Macintosh)电脑的时候，书法课上的所学全都浮现在我的脑海里。我们把它全部融入Mac电脑的设计之中。这是史上第一台拥有精美字体版式的电脑。如果我在大学时期从未旁听过那一课，Mac电脑就不会有如此丰富的字体，或是如此适当的字体间距。而且，要不是Windows电脑抄袭了Mac，那么PC机很可能就不会有这么美妙的字体。如果我没有退学，我就不会旁听书法课，而个人电脑也可能就不会拥有如此美妙的字体了。当然，当时还在大学的时候不可能从这一点看到未来，。但十年后回首往事，一切都非常非常清晰。
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.
再次说明，你们不可能从现在的点看到未来，只有回首看时才能看清来龙去脉。因此，你要相信，这些点在你的未来终将连接起来。你们必须相信某种东西——你的胆识、命运、生命、业力，等等。
