Comprehension Passage
Read the passage and answer the following questions.
Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That’s it. 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 before I really quit. Looking back, it was one of the best decisions I ever made. I could stop taking the required classes that didn’t interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting. I didn’t have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends’ rooms. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on.
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. If I had never dropped in on that course in college the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or for that matter even proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied Mac, it’s likely no personal computer would have them. But it was very clear looking backwards 10 years later.
My second story is about love and loss. I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz (Steve Wozniak) and I started Apple when I was 20. In 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company. And then I got fired. It was devastating. But something slowly began to dawn on me- I still loved what I did. And so I decided to start over. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.
My third story is about death. About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor’s code for ‘prepare to die’. I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy. 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. This was the closest I’ve been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you: Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.- Steve Jobs
What does 'diagnosis' mean?
1
a sentence worded or expressed so as to elicit information.
2
an estimate or forecast of a future situation based on a study of present trends.
3
process of establishing something exactly by calculation or research
4
the identification of the nature of an illness or other problem by examination of the symptoms.
5
the inability to make a decision quickly.