And 17 years later I did go to college.But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford.And all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition.After six months, I couldn't see the value 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 required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.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.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.
十七年后，我真的上了大学。但是我很愚蠢的选择了一个几乎和你们斯坦福大学一样贵的学校。我父母还处于蓝领阶层，他们几乎把所有积蓄都花在了我的学费上面。在六个月后，我已经看不到其中的价值所在。我不知道要怎么做，我也不知道大学能不能帮我找到答案。而且在这里，我几乎花光了我父母这一辈子的全部积蓄。所以我决定要退学，我觉得这才是正确的选择。我那时的确很害怕，不过现在看来，那应该是我人生中做得最正确的选择。在我做出退学决定的那一刻，我终于可以不必去读那些令我提不起丝毫兴趣的课程了，然后我可以去攻读那些我喜欢的课程了。不过那也不都是那么的浪漫。我失去了我的宿舍，所以我只能睡在朋友房间的地板上。我又去捡五美分的可乐瓶了，仅仅是为了填饱肚子。每个星期天晚上，我会走7英里的路穿过波特兰市区去 Hare Krishna 神庙去吃顿好的。我爱上了它。很多在这段跟随自己的好奇心和直觉度过的日子里学到的东西，后来都让我获益匪浅。我给你们举个例子。雷德大学当时的书法课程大概是美国国内最好的了。校园里的每一幅海报，抽屉上的每一个标签，都是用漂亮的字体手写而成的。
