1998年，施莱弗在圣十字学院演讲
“永远不要指望别人在经济上支持你。”
NBC的新闻主播、肯尼迪家族的第三代成员玛丽亚·施莱弗在圣十字学院1998年的毕业典礼上发表了这篇演讲，她的言论一经发表就受到了全国的广泛关注。施莱弗提到她在演讲之前就得到了很多关于“演讲应该讲什么”的建议，最终她决定去分享“当我像你们一样坐在毕业典礼的会堂里，我最希望别人告诉我的十件事”，这十件事包括“发掘你的激情”、“不要让工作压倒你”、“女超人不存在”等等。
施莱弗用她自己在事业上和育儿上的亲身经历来支持她的观点，她做到了用最诙谐的方式去对待生活中最艰难的时刻。
在这篇大受好评的演讲的基础上，施莱弗又出版了名为《在我走进真实世界前我最想知道的十件事》一书，这本书一经出版就迅速成为毕业礼物清单上的大热门，霎时间风靡整个校园。
在20xx年，施莱弗又继续发表了她的第二次毕业演讲，她的这次发声同样掷地有声。这篇名为“停顿的力量”的演讲发表在南加州大学的毕业典礼上， 这正是她女儿的毕业典礼，她建议新的毕业生在做重大的判断和决策之前先停一停。
i am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. i never graduated from college. truth be told, this is the closest i've ever gotten to a college graduation.
today i want to tell you three stories from my life. that's it. no big deal. just three stories.
the first story is about connecting the dots.
i dropped out of reed college after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before i really quit. so why did i drop out?
it started before i was born. my biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. she felt very strongly that i should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. except that when i popped out they decided at 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 you want him?" they said: "of course." my biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. she refused to sign the final adoption papers. she only relented a few months later when my 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 almost as expensive as stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. after six months, i couldn't see the value in it. i had no idea what i wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. and here i was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. so i decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out ok. it was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions i ever made. the minute i dropped out i could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.
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 san 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 ten 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, its 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 backwards ten years later.
again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. 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.
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 had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. we had just released our finest creation - the macintosh - a year earlier, 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 future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. when we did, our board of directors sided with him. so at 30 i was out. and very publicly out. what had been 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 for 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 changed 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 could 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, another company named pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife.
pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, toy story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. in a remarkable turn of events, apple bought next, i retuned 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 would 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 that i loved what i did.
亲爱的20xx届毕业生同学们：
大家上午好!今天我们相聚在图书馆前的大草坪上，用这种隆重而浪漫的形式为你们举行毕业典礼。
在场有很多同学是四年前我作为校长迎来的第一届学生。记得在当年的开学典礼上，我曾说过，作为新校长我希望和同学们一起成长、一起进步。转眼四年过去了，除了白发增加了很多之外，我不确定自己是否有所进步。但我确定在这几年时间里，你们经历了各种考验和挑战，实现了蜕变和成长。也使得今天我可以站在这里，带着欣喜、骄傲和不舍，最热烈地祝贺你们——7306名同学，祝贺你们成功打出山门，顺利毕业了!
同样是在四年前的开学典礼上，我曾经和大家分享了我对“大学是什么”的理解。当时我说的话也许很少有人还记得，但这并不重要，因为对这个问题，现在你们每个人都有了自己的答案。
对生科院的博士研究生王铭明来说，大学是学霸和爱情的完美结合，他不仅在国际著名学术刊物上发表了多篇论文，申请了多项国家发明专利，还与女朋友搭档，拿下了挑战杯二等奖——可见，华师大的姑娘真的就是那么可爱。
在社发院的硕士研究生李露萍看来，她的大学是专业学习与社会现实的紧密结合，她持续关注和研究“农民农”问题，并因此获得了杨雄市长亲自颁发的“市长奖”。
在计算机科学与软件工程学院本科生孙铭君的眼里，大学是一个可以去大胆实践梦想的地方，他与小伙伴们一起创立的牛咖信息科技有限公司，目前已经成功融资超过500万。
虽然每个人的大学都不相同，但相同的是，今天在场的每位同学都是成功者，是你们共同创造了最新版的“师大故事”，接续了师大绵延137年的文脉长河，成就了华东师大在20xx年最大的成功和荣耀!
还记得孟宪承书院的同学们刚刚入学，我拿着扩音喇叭给大家做校园导游的情形。那个时候，你们的脸上还带着稚气和青涩，和我不久之前在书院毕业生座谈会上看到的迥然不同。经过了四年的熏陶和历练，如今你们的眼神中，透出的是作为优秀教师应有的自信、沉稳和坚定。你我都知道，在这些变化的背后，倾注着老师们的付出和汗水。但你们未必知道，在你们学业有成的这一刻，老师心中那油然而生的幸福感觉，是何等的美好。
在今天这样一个特殊的日子里，因你们而感到幸福的当然还有你们的父母家人。在今年专程赶来参加毕业典礼的学生家长中有一位加拿大教授。他的儿子在师大留学期间和其他七位留学生同学一起参加了在云南省德宏州梁河县小厂乡大邦幸小学的义务支教，儿子的这一选择让这位父亲感到非常自豪，他因此决定飞过来参加儿子的毕业典礼。同样作为父亲，我能够体会他的心情，能够体会今天在场和不在场的所有毕业生父母自豪的心情。你们为孩子的成长所付出的一切，在今天这一刻得到了回报。
在这里，我要请大家把最热烈的掌声送给全体毕业生同学，感谢你们为母校、为老师、为家人带来了荣耀、幸福和自豪，我特别还要感谢的是，你们用自己的努力和行动，印证了我四年前说的那句话，你们就是大学，你们就是华东师大!
在我看来，华东师大一直都有着一种特殊的气质。尽管我们早就不是一所传统意义上的师范大学，尽管我们在研究型大学的建设上不断迈出新的步伐，但“师范”二字所包含的求实创造，为人师表的精神，仍然在深刻影响着学校的办学行为和价值选择。无论世事如何变化，这所大学总是能够乐观地面对一切，不忘初心，不负己任，踏踏实实地尽到教书育人、服务国家和社会的责任。这也许会让我们在功利喧嚣的竞争环境中不那么显眼，但却可以让我们在追求卓越的道路上行得更稳、走得更远。这所学校的过去和今天值得我们骄傲，这所学校更加美好、更加卓越的明天在等待我们去携手创造!
亲爱的同学们，这就是你们的母校，一个你们曾经呆过三年、四年甚至更长时间的地方，一个你们实现蜕变和成长的地方。今天的典礼之后，你们中的很多人将背起行囊，独自去开启人生的下一段精彩。在离别的时刻，作为你们的校长和学长，我有很多希望和祝福想要表达。我希望你们都能健康平安，人生幸福;希望你们能够追求卓越，事业成功;希望你们能够品行高尚，受人尊敬。而在所有这些愿望之外，我还有两个简单而朴素的希望。
我希望你们能够拥有积极乐观的人生态度，因为它可以改变你看待世界的眼光和做人做事的方式，使你宽容、坚韧并更有魅力。一位成就斐然、广受敬重的学者曾经告诉我，应该更多地用积极乐观的眼光去看待周围的人和事，应该努力让自己的工作环境保持和谐愉快，否则自己的人生不会幸福，事业也难有成绩。他这番朴素但又深刻的人生思考，让我在更高的层次上认识了乐观的意义和价值，认识到积极乐观应该成为我们的坚定选择，因为它关系到我们的身心健康，事业成就，特别是人生幸福。
我还希望你们把传递积极乐观作为自己的责任。师大20xx届毕业生中有一位韩颖同学。虽然疾病让她失去了视力，但积极乐观的心态却支撑着她迈上了一个又一个在旁人看来她难以迈上的台阶。靠牵着导盲犬，她完成了在师大的学业，毕业后，又作为首批视障人士参加并通过了英语中级口译考试，帮助和带动了更多视障学友走进了终身教育的课堂，成为了“全国残疾人自强模范”。而更令人钦佩的是，为了实现儿时的梦想，最近她又创办了光影之声文化发展中心，带领着一批视障朋友投入到“无障碍电影”的公益事业中。从她的身上，我看到了积极乐观的力量，看到了师大人的社会担当。我希望，从这个校门走出去的人，都能像韩颖一样，把传递积极乐观作为自己的责任，能影响和带动更多的人，共同去追逐梦想。
亲爱的同学们，毕业的弦歌已经奏响，你们也即将挥别母校。多年之后，无论你们身处何地，成就几何，我都希望大家始终能把积极乐观作为自己的选择和责任，始终能用微笑去面对人生。但如果哪一天你们真的累了，也不妨暂时停下脚步，回头看看你们的母校，看看那些“当时只道是寻常”的美好记忆——
一起夜跑的疯狂日子，是你们回不去的青春年华;深夜食堂里的麻辣小龙虾，会成为某一天你放不下的执着念想;广场音乐会的满天星光，是学弟学妹们给你们送上的美好祝福;樱桃河畔那摇曳的紫色马鞭草，是母校赠与你们的最梦幻的毕业礼物。而你们胸前闪闪发亮的毕业徽章，则是今天，母校和你们守望一生的承诺。
再见了，同学们!请带上母校的祝福，去开创你们因为积极乐观，所以幸福美满的人生吧!