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This program is brought to you by Stanford University.
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Please visit us at stanford.edu Thank You.
I am honoredfeeling proud and privileged to be involved in something special. to be with you today at your commencementa formal ceremony at which degrees are awarded to students. from one of the finest universities in the world.
Truth be told I never graduatedto successfully complete a course of study at a school or university. from college and this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation.
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.
I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 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, unwednot married (usually used to describe someone who has a child but is not married). graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoptionthe legal process of taking another person's child into your family and raising them as your own..
She felt very strongly that I should be adoptedto legally take another person's child into your family. by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adoptedto legally take another person's child into your family. 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 refusedto say that you will not do something or give something to someone. to sign the final adoption papers.
She only relentedto become less severe or strict a few months later when my parents promised that I would go to college.
This was the startthe beginning of something. in my life.
And 17 years later I did go to college.
But I naivelyin a way that shows a lack of experience chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuitionmoney charged for teaching.
After six months, I couldn't see the valuethe importance in it.
I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out.
And here I was spending all of 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 requiredneeded or demanded by rules or laws. classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.
It wasn't all romantic.
