Task ONE

Listen to Steve Job's Commencement Speech. The speech has 3 parts. Listen to the FIRST part (it ends at 5 minutes 40 seconds) and say whether the following statements are TRUE, FALSE or NOT STATED.

1. Steve Jobs has a university degree.

2. In his speech he would like to share three stories about the University of Stanford.

3. He dropped out of college after 3 months.

4. His biological mother was single.

5. He was adopted by college graduates.

6. His adoptive parents promised that he would go to university.

7. He went to a very expensive college.

8. He regrets that he dropped out of college.

9. In spite of dropping out of college, he still took a calligraphy course.

10. You can 'connect the dots' looking forwards

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TASK TWO:

Listen to the second part of the story (starts at 5 minutes 40 seconds) and fill in the missing words (which you can find down below)

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents’ garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple .....(1)..... grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4,000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year .....(2)....., and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the .....(3)..... began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided .....(4)..... him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had .....(5).... the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn’t know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down — that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize.....(6).....  screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not .....(7).....  that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that .....(8).......  have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, .....(9)........ company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the world’s first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of .....(10)....., Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple’s current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I’m pretty sure none of this .....(11)..... have happened if I hadn’t been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was ......(12)..........I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. 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. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets .....(13)..... and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.

Words to use in the gaps:

another, been, better, changed, could, earlier, events, for, future, had, that, with, would

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TASK THREE

Before you listen to the third part of the speech (starting at 9 minutes 5) fill in the gaps at the beginning of each paragraph with sentences marked A - H. When you are ready listen and check

My third story is about death.

.........1............. It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

.........2............. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure — these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

.......3............. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn’t even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor’s code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you’d have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

..........4............ Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I’m fine now.

............5.......... Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

..........6......... Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

.........7.......... Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

.........8......... It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960s, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors and Polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: It was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

.........9........ It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.” It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

A: Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life.

B: About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer.

C: When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation.

D: When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.”

E: I lived with that diagnosis all day

F: This was the closest I’ve been to facing death, and I hope it’s the closest I get for a few more decades.

G: Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.

H: Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue.

I: No one wants to die.