1. The first instance, Jobs told about his birth to an unwed college graduate student; so he was given up for adoption. When he was about to be adopted by a couple, they changed their mind and chose a baby girl instead. When his parents came to adopt him, they were later denied by his biological mother because they never finished college. His parents finally got him only when they promised that he would be given a college education.2. When he was ready for college, his parents' savings was used for his college tuition. It pained him to see his working-class parents' hard earned money being wasted on subjects he was not interested in. Since he did not really have a clear direction on what to pursue, he dropped out of those subjects and took only the ones that interested him. 3. Aside from not being able to go to a well-known university, he could not also afford the dorm. He slept on the floor in his friends'room. His food came from the money he got from returning coke bottles. In order to eat good meals, he would go to the Hare Krishna temple walking 7 miles every Sunday to get a free meal.4. He was 20 years old when he finally found out what he loved doing. He and Woz founded Apple but after 10 years was fired by the very company he founded. The man he hired to help him turned out to be the cause of his leaving his company. His life was a mess at age 30; He was clueless and uncertain for months.5. When things were good again after having founded NeXT and Pixar, married and had children, he was diagnosed with a terminal cancer of the pancreas. He was so depressed to reveal the bad news to his wife and children. He was told that he had only 3-6 months to live and he had to endure going through endoscopy. 6. Why did he share these elements to his audience? He shared all these challenging times in his life in order to give hope and encouragement to the young graduates. He proved to the graduates at Stanford that bad times could turn out into stepping stones to better opportunities in life -- that negative things happen for a purpose most, if not all, of the time.
