Since the passing of iconic innovator and thinker, Steve Jobs, a lot of us have been left to think, “Damn, this guy really did a lot for the world.” Yes, Apple really did change our lives, in fact, for many of us like-minded designers know Jobs is a part of our consciousness.
Being that we’re all living in a chaotic economic times, it is easy to turn to Steve Jobs for some peace of mind that things will get better for Americans. The death of great men have always sparked our hearts and minds to think deeper about the meaning of life – ’cause you know media is going to hit us over the head so they can get its programming ratings up (yeah, let’s be real).
We want to see how he made it work. As I examine his life, or just the bits of it, I see that he really is extraordinary. He is a man of great achievements – having dealt the blow of being given up for adoption; dropping out of college six months into it because he thought it was waste of his adoptive parents money and his time.
Instead, he took the path less taken, saying fuck a 9-to-5, fuck college, and fuck people’s ideals. He opted for sleeping on friend’s floors, taking a typography class that later formed the foundation for how Apple was to look and feel like.
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.
All I can say is, Steve Jobs can be really only be explained by self: his commencement speech at Stanford back in 2005.
A must-watch if you’re feeling down in the dumps.
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