Steve Jobs 2
Pioneer of the personal computer revolution and digital guru Steve Jobs was born in San Francisco on February 24, 1955.
Jobs was adopted at birth by Paul Reinhold Jobs and Clara Jobs. His biological parents, a Syrian-born man and Swiss-American woman, decided to place him for adoption because his biological mother’s family did not approve of her daughter’s relationship.
Jobs attended Reed College, in Portland, Oregon, for only six months. After dropping out, Jobs worked for a short time at Atari, inventors of the first modern videogame system, then traveled to India, where he began a life-long devotion to Zen Buddhism. After returning to America, Jobs met Steve Wozniak, a gifted electrical engineer, and the two founded the “Apple Computer Company.” The rest, as they say, is history.
In 2005, after having revolutionized the ways in which we interact, both with technology and one another, Steve Jobs delivered the Commencement address at Stanford University. He opened up about his adoption: “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. 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 someday go to college. You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.”
Jobs was adopted at birth by Paul Reinhold Jobs and Clara Jobs. His biological parents, a Syrian-born man and Swiss-American woman, decided to place him for adoption because his biological mother’s family did not approve of her daughter’s relationship.
Jobs attended Reed College, in Portland, Oregon, for only six months. After dropping out, Jobs worked for a short time at Atari, inventors of the first modern videogame system, then traveled to India, where he began a life-long devotion to Zen Buddhism. After returning to America, Jobs met Steve Wozniak, a gifted electrical engineer, and the two founded the “Apple Computer Company.” The rest, as they say, is history.
In 2005, after having revolutionized the ways in which we interact, both with technology and one another, Steve Jobs delivered the Commencement address at Stanford University. He opened up about his adoption: “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. 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 someday go to college. You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.”