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 5¢ 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. Because I had dropped out and didn’t have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and sans serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating.
None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But 10 years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it’s likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backward 10 years later.
Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.
难点注释
romantic富于幻想而不切实际的
dorm room宿舍
Coke（非正式）=Coca-Cola可口可乐
deposit押金，此指退可乐瓶的钱
Hare Krishna / ,hɑri `krɪʃnə /印度教克利须那派;
基于印度教神克里希纳或克利须那的宗教组织。成员穿橙色衣服。
temple庙，寺
stumble into无意间涉足某事
curiosity好奇心
intuition直觉
priceless无价的; 极贵重的
later on<口>以后
calligraphy书法
instruction授课
poster海报
label标签;
drawer抽屉
hand-calligraphed手写体的
serif 衬线字体
sans-serif无衬线字体
typeface字体
vary使多样化
letter combination字母组合
typography版面设计
historical有史可稽的
artistically在艺术上
subtle巧妙的
in a way that...在某种程度上…
capture（用图画、文章、电影等准确地）表达，刻画
fascinating迷人的
have a hope of...有......希望
practical application实际应用
Macintosh 麦金塔电脑（简称Mac，香港俗称Mac机，大陆亦有人称作苹果机，是苹果电脑其中一系列的个人电脑。
sth comes back to sb某事被某人学以致用，或派上用场。
Mac麦金塔电脑简称
multiple typefaces多种字体
proportionally spaced间距比例协调的
font字体
Windows微软公司生产的“视窗”操作系统
look backwards回头看，回顾既往
somehow以某种方式
trust in相信
gut直觉
karma（佛教和印度教的）业；因果报应
whatever诸如此类
down the road（非正式，主北美）在将来
follow one’s heart从心所愿，做自己想做的事情
off the well-worn path偏离步人后尘的老路
make all the difference---to have an important effect on sb/sth; to make sb feel better 关系重大,意义非同凡响。
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