I am honored to be with you today at yourcommencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I’veever gotten to a college graduation.
Today I want to tell you three stories frommy life. That’s it. No big deal. Just three stories. I dropped out of Reed College after the first6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I reallyquit.
So why did I drop out? It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed collegegraduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption.
She felt very strongly that I should be adoptedby college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyerand his wife.
Except that when I popped out they decidedat 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 youwant him?” They said: “Of course.”
My biological mother later found out thatmy mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated fromhigh school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers.
She only relented a few months later whenmy parents promised that I would someday go to college. And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almostas expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents’ savings were being spent on mycollege tuition.
After six months, I couldn’t see the valuein it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with mylife and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money myparents had saved their entire life.
Today I want to tell you three stories frommy life. That’s it. No big deal. Just three stories. I dropped out of Reed College after the first6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I reallyquit.
So why did I drop out? It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed collegegraduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption.
She felt very strongly that I should be adoptedby college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyerand his wife.
Except that when I popped out they decidedat 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 youwant him?” They said: “Of course.”
My biological mother later found out thatmy mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated fromhigh school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers.
She only relented a few months later whenmy parents promised that I would someday go to college. And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almostas expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents’ savings were being spent on mycollege tuition.
After six months, I couldn’t see the valuein it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with mylife and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money myparents had saved their entire life.
