Steve Jobs: From Homeless Drop-Out to Innovative Millionaire
As many successful entrepreneurs before him, Apple founder and former CEO, Steve Jobs, had a long and tumultuous journey full for surprises to success.
Becoming one of the most innovative and talented minds of the 21st century did not always seem a realistic possibility for a young college dropout like Steve Jobs.
At a speech Jobs gave at a Stanford University commencement in 2005 he told the graduating students that as a child, his parents put him up for adoption.
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One of the stipulations Jobs’ biological mother had for the adoption was that Jobs be adopted by college-educated parents.
However, in the end Paul and Clara Jobs adopted the young Steve Jobs. Clara never graduated from college and Paul never graduated from high school.
Jobs’ mother was reluctant to let her son go and only signed the adoption papers when his newly adopted parents promised that they would ensure Jobs would go to college.
In 1972, Jobs enrolled at Reed College in Portland, Oregon.
Jobs ultimately decided to drop out of Reed College and did so because he trusted that “it would all work out ok.”
However, during this process, Jobs became homeless.
As a Reed drop out, Jobs did not have a dorm room and slept on the floor of his friends’ dormitories.
Being a homeless and unemployed student required Jobs to return coke bottles to earn money for food and walk seven miles across town to get a free meal once a week at the Hare Krishna temple.
In the end, Jobs says that dropping out of college and pursuing his intuition was one of the “best decisions he ever made.”
Jobs told students, “You cannot connect the dots looking forward, you can only connect them looking backwards.”
Jobs urged students to pursue their dreams and see opportunities in the life’s setbacks and follow their hearts because in the end, Jobs started Apple out of his parents garage when he was 20-years-old.
Within 10 years, Jobs was part of a company that was worth $2 billion and which ultimately become one of the most important technology companies of our time.
