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.
十七年后,我真的上了大学。但是当时我幼稚地选了一所学费几乎和斯坦福大学一样昂贵的学校,而我的养父母只是工薪阶层,他们倾其积蓄为我支付了大学学费。过了六个月后,我却看不出上大学有什么意义。我既不知道自己这一生想干什么,也不知道念大学是否能帮我弄明白这一点,而且在那儿我会花光父母一辈子节省下来的钱。
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 far more interesting.
所以,我决定退学,并坚信日后会证明我这样做是对的。当年做出这个决定时心里很害怕,但现在回想起来,这还真是我有生以来做出的最好的决定之一。一退学,我就可以不再选那些我一点儿都不感兴趣的必修课,开始旁听一些看上去有趣得多的课。
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 five cent deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the seven 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: