On October 5th, 2011, Apple co-founder and technical visionary Steve P. Jobs died. Since 2003, Jobs had waged a long battle with pancreatic cancer. However, despite taking three medical leaves of absences from 2004 – 2009, Jobs continued to introduce new products, such as the iPad and iPhone 3G, to the global market. On August 25th, 2011, Jobs resigned as CEO of Apple, stating, “I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple’s CEO, I would be the first to let you know.”
Tributes to Steve Jobs began immediately, with Microsoft Co-Founder Bill Gates saying, “For those of us lucky enough to get to work with Steve, it has been an insanely great honor. I will miss Steve immensely.” Shortly after, President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle released a statement saying, “Steve was among the greatest of American innovators – brave enough to think differently, bold enough to believe he could change the world, and talented enough to do it.”
Hailed as a man who transformed the digital age and, as said by John Markoff, “ushered in the era of personal computers,” Steve Jobs leaves behind a legacy that will be remembered for generations to come.
Jobs’s life story is extraordinary. As President Obama stated, he exemplified, “the spirit of American ingenuity,” for he had “achieved one of the rarest feats in human history: he changed the way each of us sees the world.”
Dropping out of Reed College at the age of 18, co-founding Apple in his parents’ garage before the age of 21, getting fired from Apple at the age of 30, and then being reinstated back as the CEO of Apple at the age of 42, Steve Jobs’s life offers many valuable lessons for adults and students alike. So what can we learn from this legendary figure, a figure that has inspired us to innovate in ways that have not been done before?
Lesson One: Trust your curiosity to guide you
“Much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on.” – Stanford Commencement Speech, 2005
Steve Jobs dropped out of college after 6 months. He slept in his friends’ dorms, returned coke bottles for five cent deposits, and walked seven miles across town every Sunday night to get a good free meal. However, Jobs viewed dropping out college as an opportunity to pursue what interested him.
Jobs began taking calligraphy classes, as he viewed the typography to be “beautiful, historical, and artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture.” Jobs knew that this class would not have any practical application in his life at the time, but he trusted his curiosity and instincts. Ten years later, Jobs saw an opportunity to use the knowledge he had gained from that calligraphy class.
Steve Jobs designed the Macintosh, stating, “If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. If I had never dropped out, and dropped into that class, personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they now do.”
As students, we are exposed to a four main disciplines: science, english, math, and history, but do we pursue knowledge in those classrooms solely because of its practicability and rationality? Steve Jobs’s experience in that calligraphy class should inspire us to trust ourselves in pursuing classes that are foreign, engaging, and non-traditional. We may be told that a certain class can have no applicability in our future, but if we trust our intuition and curiosity, we will always find a way to utilize that knowledge. Curiosity is priceless, and as Steve Jobs said, “you have to trust that that dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something.”
Lesson Two: Learn from your failures
“I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the Valley, but I decided to start over” – Stanford Commencement Speech, 2005
Steve Jobs was not afraid to fail; in fact, he embraced the lessons he learned from his failures. When Jobs first founded Apple in the 1980s, he favored one model of disk drive, which he called the “Twiggy” Disk Drive. This model allowed the reading of computer programs on a small, removable floppy disk. However, the other members of Apple believed the design to be flawed, and instead opted to design another model of the floppy disk. In the end, Jobs’s “Twiggy” Disk Drive failed – it could not be used for the Lisa computer Apple was designing at the time, and instead, Jobs opted to use the model his partners had designed. Steve Capps, a computer scientist who had worked with Jobs on the disk drive, said, “When we showed him the result, he embraced it. He turned on a dime.”
Apple’s Lisa computer is another example of a commercial failure. Designed in 1983, Lisa could not compete against other computers, due to its ten thousand dollar price tag. However, Jobs learned from his failure, and one year later, he created the Macintosh. Through the Lisa operating system, Jobs saw the opportunity for the Macintosh to have a cooperative multitasking and virtual memory system on a personal computer.
As teenage students, it is not uncommon for us to experience what each of us deems as failuresor mistakes – a bad grade on an essay, a missed homework assignment, or a late to school. However, these are integral parts of our education, despite them usually being “frowned upon.” If we do not fail, then how do we know if we have succeeded? Our failures set us up to learn, for they allow us to evaluate our mistakes and then proceed to implement these improvements into our lives. Furthermore, failures allow us to set goals for ourselves. Danielle Niderman ’12 said, “If we don’t have standards to live up to, then there is nothing to push us towards better work.”
Lesson Three: Don’t Settle – Love what you do.
“You have got to find what you love. 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. And if you haven’t found it yet, keep looking.” – Stanford Commencement Speech, 2005
Steve Jobs stated that he was “lucky,” for he had found what he wanted to do early in his life: designing computers. Jobs and Apple co-founder, Steve Wozniak, began Apple Computers in Jobs’ parents’ garage, and, within ten years, Apple had grown into a 2 billion dollar company with over 4,000 employees. Shortly afterwards, Jobs hired John Sculley as CEO of Apple. However, Jobs and Sculley’s visions of the future for Apple began to diverge, and eventually, their working relationship began to deteriorate. At the age of 30, Apple’s Board of Directors fired Jobs. Jobs stated that, “What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.”
However, Jobs did not let his firing from Apple change his passion – he still loved what he did. In 1985, Jobs founded NeXT Computers with the seven million dollars he had from Apple. Jobs worked hard and trusted himself, and in 1996, Apple announced that it would buy NeXT for four hundred and twenty-nine million dollars. The deal was finalized, and Jobs was reinstated as CEO of Apple in July 1997.
Steve Jobs allowed his passion to guide his next step in life, and, in turn, his life was successful – not only on an economic basis, but on a personal one. Jobs had accomplished his goal: he had innovated technology in an unprecedented way – he has made it more interactive and intuitive, and this was all fueled by his passion.
Becky Melis ’14 believes that this lesson “is especially applicable to us in high school. This is the time where we figure out our passions, and it is vital to remember that if you are not doing something you love, it is not worth your time.”
Jacqui Dropkin ’13 stated, “In high school, the common misconception among students is that we should only do what will bring us money. However, Steve Jobs was a breathe of fresh air from this idea. He did not care if he made any money. Steve Jobs is proof that life is short, for his life ended quite suddenly. However, it was a life not wasted, because he was happy every day by doing what he loved to do. Steve Jobs gives students the will and courage to pursue our passions. That is one thing that money cannot buy.”