Episode Details

▶👍【中英文字幕】
https://youtu.be/kjqqn_-xbbU
▶🍭【贊助支持我們】
https://bit.ly/2XPtRCT
▶🤝【成為會員支持我們】
www.youtube.com/channel/UC71N5gYCpweE6ddRnqSwkNw/join

逐字稿:
I’m honored to be with you today for 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.

我感到非常榮幸，今天能在你們的畢業典禮上與你們同在。
你們可是來自世界上最頂尖的大學之一！
說實話，其實我從來沒有從大學畢業過，
而今天這是我距離大學畢業最近的一次。

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.

今天我想跟大家分享三個我人生中的故事。
就只是這樣。沒什麼大不了的，就三個故事。

I dropped out of Reed College after the first six months but then stayed around as a drop-in for another eighteen 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 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’ve got an unexpected baby boy. Do you want him?” They said, “Of course.” My biological mother found out later 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.

我在里德學院讀了六個月後輟學，
但之後又以旁聽的身份
待了大約十八個月，然後才真正離開。
那為什麼我會輟學呢？
這得追溯到我出生之前。
我的親生母是一位年輕的未婚研究生，
她決定讓我被領養。
她非常堅持要讓我被一對大學畢業的夫妻領養，
於是所有的安排都已經就緒，
準備讓我出生後被一位律師和他的妻子領養。
但在我出生的那一刻，他們突然改變主意，
說他們其實更想要一個女兒。
於是，我的養父母當時在等待領養名單上，
半夜接到了一通電話，對方問：
「我們有個突如其來的男嬰，你們願意領養嗎？」
他們回答：「當然願意。」
但我的生母後來發現，
我的養母其實從未大學畢業，
而我的養父甚至連高中都沒畢業。
因此她拒絕簽署最終的領養文件。
直到幾個月後，她才勉強同意，
前提是我的養父母必須承諾讓我將來進大學。

This was the start in my life. And seventeen years later, I did go to college, but I naïvely 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.

這就是我人生的起點。
17年後，我真的進了大學。然而，我天真地選了一所
學費幾乎和史丹佛一樣昂貴的學校，
而我的工人階級父母的
所有積蓄都被用來支付我的學費。
六個月後，我開始覺得這樣沒有價值。
我完全不知道我人生做什麼，
也不知道大學能如何幫助我找到答案。
而我卻花光了我父母一輩子的積蓄。
所以我決定輟學，並相信一切都會好起來。
當時這個決定非常可怕，
但回頭看，這是我做過最棒的決定之一。
當我輟學的那一刻，我就可以停止