Steve Jobs' Stanford Graduation Speech 2005

The part that I identified most with Steve Jobs was the fact that his parents always pushed him to go to college. My entire life my parent's have been saving up for me to go to college and not going ever really didn't seem like an option. And even though I'm not really at that point of actually being in a university, I do worry about some things that eventually made Jobs drop out, such as money. I worry that, as is stated in the article, I'm just draining all of the money that my parents have moved aside for me. And not only that, but I'm considering going to a private university as well, which would be double the cost. Although, in the end, I can't imagine that I would ever drop out of college as Jobs did, but I'm sure that Jobs never would have imagined that he'd drop out either. It would just seem like too much work has been put into getting accepted, attending, and graduating college just to throw it all away at the drop of a hat.

Jobs mentions in his speech how he was fired from his job at Apple but actually looks back at it as a good thing. He says that you can really only connect the dots in your life when you look back at them, not while you're in them, which I think is really what an ePortfolio is all about. You're reflecting on your past work and achievements, which is literally impossible to do while you are in the present. In the present-time, Jobs must have thought that his dropping out of school would just lead him down a path of total failure, completely unaware of what was to lie ahead of him. It's only that by looking back, he can see how he maybe strengthened as a person and was able to focus more on what he really enjoyed doing. In this case, an ePortfolio would be really helpful for Jobs to look back and see how his life choices regarding his education changed his path in life.