Steve Jobs's Speech Text [source]:
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.
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.
