在十七歲那年,我真的上了大學。但是我很愚蠢的選擇了一個幾乎和你們斯坦福大學一樣貴的學校, 我父母還處於藍領階層，他們幾乎把所有積蓄都花在了我的學費上麵。在六個月後, 我已經看不到其中的價值所在。我不知道我想要在生命中做什麼,我也不知道大學能幫助我找到怎樣的答案。但是在這裏，我幾乎花光了我父母這一輩子的所有積蓄。所以我決定要退學,我覺得這是個正確的決定。不能否認,我當時確實非常的害怕, 但是現在回頭看看,那的確是我這一生中最棒的一個決定。在我做出退學決定的那一刻, 我終於可以不必去讀那些令我提不起絲毫興趣的課程了。然後我還可以去修那些看起來有點意思的課程。
It wasn''''t all romantic. I didn''''t have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends'''' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the five-cent deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:
但是這並不是那麼羅曼蒂克。我失去了我的宿舍,所以我隻能在朋友房間的地板上麵睡覺,我去撿5美分的可樂瓶子，僅僅為了填飽肚子, 在星期天的晚上,我需要走七英裏的路程，穿過這個城市到Hare Krishna寺廟（注：位於紐約Brooklyn下城）,隻是為了能吃上飯——這個星期唯一一頓好一點的飯。但是我喜歡這樣。我跟著我的直覺和好奇心走, 遇到的很多東西,此後被證明是無價之寶。讓我給你們舉一個例子吧：
Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn''''t have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned