Thank you! 感谢大家！ I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. Truth be told I never graduated from college. And this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. 今天我很荣幸能参加你们的毕业典礼, 而且是在这样一所世界顶尖的大学里。说实话，我大学都还没毕业，所以这该是我离大学毕业最接近的一次了。 Today I wanna tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal, just three stories. The first story is about connecting the dots. 今天我想跟大家分享一下我人生中的三个故事。仅此而已，没什么了不起的，只有三个小故事。第一个故事讲的是因果联系。 I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months. But then stayed around as drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out. 我在里德大学读了六个月就退学了，不过作为旁听生，我在学校呆了有一年半才彻底离开。那么我为什么要退学呢? 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. 故事从我出生的时候讲起。我的亲生母亲是一个年轻的,没有结婚的大学毕业生。她决定让别人收养我, 她十分想让我被大学毕业生收养。所以在我出生的时候，她已经做好了一切的准备工作，能使得我被一个律师和他的妻子所收养。但是她没有料到,当我出生之后,律师夫妇突然决定他们想要一个女孩。 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 go to college. This was a start in my life. 所以我的生养父母(他们还在我亲生父母的观察名单上)突然在半夜接到了一个电话:"我们现在这儿有一个不小心生出来的男婴,你们想要他吗?"他们回答道:"当然!"但是我亲生母亲随后发现，我的养母从来没有上过大学,我的父亲甚至从没有读过高中。她拒绝签这个收养合同。只是在几个月以后,我的父母答应她一定要让我上大学,那个时候她才同意。我的人生就这样开始了。 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 of how college was going to help me figure it out, and here I was, spending all 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 far more interesting. 十七年后，我上大学了，但是我很无知地选了一所差不多和斯坦福一样贵的学校，几乎花掉我那蓝领阶层养父母一生的积蓄。六个月后，我觉得不值得。我看不出自己以后要做什么，也不晓得大学会怎样帮我指点迷津，而我却在花销父母一生的积蓄。所以我决定退学，并且相信没有做错。一开始非常吓