[originaltext] [19]I am honored to be with you today at your commencement f

[19]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, unmarried 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 [20]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 agreed 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, [21]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. [21]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. [22]It wasn’t all romantic. I didn’t have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in my friends’ rooms, I returned coke bottles for the deposits to buy food with. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. I have always wished that for myself. And now, I wish that for you. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.
Questions 19 to 22 are based on the recording you have just heard.
19. Where did the speaker make the speech?
20. Who adopted the speaker when he was born?
21. Why did the speaker quit college?
22. What was the speaker’s life like after he quit college?