The Internet has been exploding for the past 48 hours with reflections on the life of Steve Jobs. (And in the world of the Internet, 48 hours is a long time!) I’m a little late to the party, but tonight I want to honor the life of Steve Jobs by connecting some of his life philosophy with a vision for a new way of thinking about school.
The quotes included below are from his commencement speech at Stanford in 2005, which (for those who haven’t already seen it) I’ve embedded at the bottom of this post.
The first quote is about his experience taking a calligraphy class in college, and not having any idea at the time why he was doing it. Ten years later, however, when Jobs decided that the Macintosh computer would include dozens of fonts for users to choose from, it was clear that the decision to take calligraphy changed everything.
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[Y]ou 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.
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Can we imagine schools in which students are given permission to trust their gut?
At PSCS, we encourage students to pursue activities that, for whatever reason, they’re drawn to. They don’t have to explain it, they don’ t have to justify it. If a student is intrigued by a topic or an activity, we want them to go for it. That’s why, when visitors look at our scheduling board and see “Algebra I,” “Reading and Writing for College and Life,” and “Improve your Scrabble,” I’ll tell them: we don’t place any hierarchy of one class over another. Anything that students want to pursue is given equal status.
You can’t connect the dots looking forward. You have to trust the process.
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You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.
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One the first things I tell prospective families at PSCS is, “We’re going to focus on helping the student become more of who she already is, instead of trying to turn her into something she’s not.” That’s why we don’t have a specific required academic program. We’re going to offer a full slate of college preparatory classes, but we’re not going to require any of them. College isn’t for everyone. It wasn’t for Steve Jobs, who dropped out in his freshman year.
Our focus is on helping students dial into something they’re passionate about. Because when something excites you, you’ll always work harder and achieve more than someone who is doing it merely for a paycheck.
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Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
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Rest in peace, Steve Jobs. And thank you.
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