1answer.
Ask question
Login Signup
Ask question
All categories
  • English
  • Mathematics
  • Social Studies
  • Business
  • History
  • Health
  • Geography
  • Biology
  • Physics
  • Chemistry
  • Computers and Technology
  • Arts
  • World Languages
  • Spanish
  • French
  • German
  • Advanced Placement (AP)
  • SAT
  • Medicine
  • Law
  • Engineering
TEA [102]
3 years ago
9

1. I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated fr

om 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.

2. 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?

3. 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.

4. 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.

5. 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:

6. 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 sans 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.

7. None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But 10 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, it's 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 backward 10 years later.

8. Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. 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. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.
English
1 answer:
Elis [28]3 years ago
6 0

Answer:

um ok, good for u :) hope u like your college and be safe and happy

You might be interested in
Which labeled location is the place where more elephants are bred than anywhere else, according to the excerpt? A – Socotra B –
lana66690 [7]

The excerpt of this question is missing; here is the missing excerpt:

Read the excerpt from chapter 8 of The Travels of Marco Polo and study the map.

[This] is an island lying about 1,000 miles south of Socotra. The people are Saracens who worship Mahomet. They have four sheikhs—that is to say, four elders—who exercise authority over the whole island. You must know that this island is one of the biggest and best in the whole world. It is said to measure about 4,000 miles in circumference. The people live by trade and industry. More elephants are bred here than in any other province; and I assure you that not so many elephant tusks are sold in all the rest of the world put together as in this island and that of Zanzibar.

The correct answer to this question is C. Madagascar

Explanation:

In the excerpt, the narrator refers to an island located "about 1,000 miles south of Socotra". About the island, the narrator describes some geographical features of it, as well as, features of its people. This includes the detail "More elephants are bred here than in any other province" that shows the number of elephants bred in this island is higher than in any other region.

Now, on the map, it can be deduced the island the author describes is Madagascar (Location C) because this is the only island located to the South of Socotra (Location A), which coincides with the description in the excerpt.

7 0
3 years ago
Read 2 more answers
“Introduction to Oedipus the King”: According to the first paragraph of the excerpt, what mainly is Oedipus’s role in Sophocles’
ahrayia [7]

Answer:

Both choices are correct

Explanation:

In the play Oedipus is searching for Laius' murderer because an oracle tells him only when the murderer is punished will a plague end, but at the end we learn that he is the murderer. So that makes him a criminal and a detective.

4 0
3 years ago
Read this passage:
iragen [17]
The correct answer is A. :)
6 0
3 years ago
Read 2 more answers
What is the main idea in this paragraph in American society
serg [7]
Where’s the paragraph?
7 0
3 years ago
Write a topic on vaccination​
Cloud [144]

Answer:

Vaccines prevent the spread of contagious, dangerous, and deadly diseases. These include measles, polio, mumps, chicken pox, whooping cough, diphtheria, and HPV. The first vaccine discovered was the smallpox vaccine. Smallpox was a deadly illness.

A vaccine activates our immune system without making us sick. Many dangerous infectious diseases can be prevented in this simple and effective way. A vaccine activates our immune system without making us sick. Vaccines contain weakened or inactive parts of a particular organism (antigen) that triggers an immune response within the body. Newer vaccines contain the blueprint for producing antigens rather than the antigen itself.

Explanation:

(Happy to Help!)

4 0
3 years ago
Other questions:
  • What is the etymology of homonym?
    12·1 answer
  • Read the poem "Icarus's Flight" by Stephen Dobyns.
    14·1 answer
  • Which best describes Paine’s purpose in writing Common Sense?
    13·1 answer
  • Write a brief list of what you think are some the benefits of voting.
    15·1 answer
  • BRAIN!!!!!!!!!
    6·2 answers
  • Give me five reasons why and how Foggy conditions can cause problems while driving.
    15·1 answer
  • What does this passage reveal about the times Defoe was writing about? A. Slavery was more common among Christians than other pe
    14·1 answer
  • What’s is the correct answer for this?
    5·1 answer
  • The children went to school on monday
    8·1 answer
  • What are the main differences between informative and argumentative claims?
    13·1 answer
Add answer
Login
Not registered? Fast signup
Signup
Login Signup
Ask question!