I agree, very inspirational but it is pc..You've got to do what you Love? This is the lie that we have been teaching our children..the reality is that you must pay the bills..it's very expensive to live in the U.S.A. today..We should teach our kids to make yourself marketable, learn a trade or a choose a vocation that is in demand, a small percentage may end up doing something they love. The rest they can do what they love as a hobby.We should teach reality not pipe dreams..There is a need for nurses engineers, plumbers all very hard jobs,that require years of training...but the kids won't go into them because they're wasting time looking for a job that they LOVE..by the time they realize that most jobs are work and nobody loves work it's too late..they're stuck, bills and family ,no time for going back into training..
You hit the nail on the head. My first degree was in political science because I didnt know what I wanted to do and I went to college because all my friends did. After serving in the Marine Corps I went back to school and got a BS in accounting and an MBA in finance. Do I love my job? Hell no, but it pays the bills and allows me to pursue my passions--high performance autos and guns.
This is neither PC nor a lie. Kids that love engineering will become engineers, kids that love nursing will become nurses, and kids that love plumbing (I know!) will become plumbers. And because they love their chosen field, they will be very successful (and able to pay the bills).
I strongly recommend all young people choose a career path that will allow them to love what they do, lest they become stuck in job they hate!
I think this was a very inspirational and refreshing commencement speech, and I commend Jobs for not using the occasion to take a cheap shot at our President (or Republicans in general)...so many people seem to be too weak to resist that temptation!
That's the how, but omits the why; it's a prescription for making a living, not having a life. I've seen plenty of teenagers consult the books and magazines to find a field that pays, then lock themselves into it. They're old before they're 30. And we've all known people who are so dead-set on providing for their families, who spend so many hours at the office that they hardly know their children's names.
Choosing a career, like anything else, can't be summed up in duelling platitudes. Passion and pragmatism both count. Sure, you can decide at 18 to be an engineer. But if you don't care about it, don't want it, you won't be very good at it. No matter how well-designed a car is, it don't go without having a spark.
Sure, most of us have had jobs at one time or another that put food on the table but left our souls starving. It's possible -- and even normal -- to be competent without being inspired. But that's a recipe for mediocrity. It's an old wives' tale that the world is divided between dreamers and doers. Any individual who is remembered by history was a combination of both. You don't quit the safe job to take up navel-gazing, but you keep your eyes and mind open for a next move most folks don't see.
The most important decision any 22-year-old can make is to be adaptible. To be prepared to veer from the planned path in pursuit of something that's lucrative or interesting or novel. I've talked to massively successful people, and very few of them thought, in college, that they'd be where they were. They moved to new industries or invented them.
That's the central message I took away from Jobs' speech -- he's a billionaire from a few different industries, none of which existed when he was in college. If he'd set his path early and never strayed, if he'd taken the safe choice and become an accountant on Wall Street, he wouldn't be where he is.