Steve Jobs speech - Essay Example

To better prepare the audience for what they were about to hear, President John Hennessy reminded everyone of some of Steve Jobs’ main achievements in his life. Once Steve Jobs stepped up to the podium, he gave a more detailed summary about the key events in his own life. To better get his message across, Jobs focused on three main stories: connecting the dots, love and loss, and death. These three stories are very different from one another, yet in another way they are remarkably similar. There is one theme that runs through all of these stories—you can achieve anything at all as long as you put your mind to it.

This theme was appropriate considering the demographics of his audience: young, college graduates who are looking to find their place in the world. Steve Jobs’ first story, connecting the dots, used his real life experiences to show how certain events can influence the course of someone’s life. The story of his birth showed how unwanted he was as a child, and yet at the same time his life’s journey was being planned for him before it had even began. Back in the 1970’s, becoming a college graduate was seen as the ultimate success in life (in some ways, this is still the same today).

Jobs described his emotions when he was attending college even though he did not want to be there. I can relate to this because I develop these feelings from time to time. Jobs felt that college was a waste of time and he would be better served by selected only the classes that interested him. I feel that this is a very bold decision to make, especially in the context of today’s environment, where the minimum expectation is a college degree. Jobs’ choice to drop out of college would be quite radical even for today, not to mention 30 or 40 years ago.

However, this brave and bold decision allowed Jobs to be influenced by calligraphy, which would later go on to influence the design of the Apple computer. Overall, Jobs’ key instruction here is to go with what feels best in your heart. There are so many other people and institutions that tell us what we should be doing, when in fact we are the ones who know what we want to achieve and succeed at. In my view, the choices made in our lives lead to consequences, both good and bad, and it is our choices that determine the path that our life takes us down.

Jobs’ second story, love and loss, shows how plans can go astray, yet the ultimate goal can still be fulfilled. Jobs found a career that he loved, not just as a means to get by. This is something that he alludes to throughout his speech, although he does not actually mention it directly. I agree that success in life is always easier if you are doing something that you actually love. If so, you are more likely to put your heart and soul into it and receive a great reward from it. For Steve Jobs, this was working day in and day out at Apple.

However, he came across a fork in the road—he was ousted from the company by the Board of Directors. Many people would react badly to this, yet Jobs knew that he still loved working with computers and would not let this setback stop him from achieving his dream. He ended up creating his own company and later rejoined Apple. None of this would have been possible had he not been fired from Apple in the first place. I found this concept really hard to grasp because it seemed like his life had been taken away from him, although he eventually got it back.

This unfortunate event