Lessons learned from Jobs’ life

To the editor:

I find my thoughts drifting back to Steve Jobs throughout each day since his death.

I have never even owned an Apple product, so l wonder why I felt so saddened by his death. I think it may be that he represents what so many people in our country aspire to achieve — success through a passion for their work. In a time when men often opt out of college, his example of being a college dropout who achieved greatness is inspiring. This story is common throughout U.S. history.

Here, one’s background, pedigree and diploma is not worth a hill of beans if you aren’t capable of producing something tangible. Perhaps now with unemployment rolls so high, his story is even more poignant when many men seem to have simply given up in a time when many jobs are no longer about producing any product, but rather satisfying the paper monster our bureaucracy has become.

Often our college degrees are about how to write reports and do investigations to satisfy regulations. “Engineer” once meant “problem-solver;” now it often means paper maze navigator. We teach students how to model scientific observation into a computer that is unlikely to create true scientific reasoning, but rather a circular process that can hardly inspire invention. There is a real hunger for the ability to create, to invent and to produce. Perhaps that is why so many young men feel disenfranchised. The desire to keep things tidy, safe and regulated has created a sterile environment, leaving little room for risk. Or, the messy work of trial and error, or the passion that comes from and with invention and production and runs contrary to all that is the essence of man. When a man who was an orphan, college dropout, genius and inventor dies, maybe in some way we feel we are watching the American dream die with him.

Yvonne Sumner

Wasilla