Bill Gates

2019.6.22(토)

 

One of my biggest memories of Harvard came in January 1975,

When I made a call / from Currier House / to a company in Albuquerque, New Mexico / that had

begun making the world's first personal computers.

I offered to sell them software.

 

I worried they would realize / I was just a student in a dorm / and hang up on me.

Instead they said; "We're not quiet ready, / come see us in a month," /

which was a good thing, / because we hadn't written the software yet.

From that moment, / I worked day and night / on the extra credit project /

that marked the end of my college education / and the begining of a remarkable journey with Microsoft.

 

What I remembered above all about Harvard was being in the midst of so much energy and intelligence.

It could be exhilarating, intimidating, sometimes even discouraging, but always challenging.

It was an amazing privilege- and though I left early, I was transformed by my years at Harvard,

the friendships I made, and the ideas I worked on.

 

But taking a serious look back....I do have one big regret.

I left Harvard with no real awarness of the awful inequities in the world -

the appalling disparities of health, and wealth, and opportuninty that condemn millions of people to lives of despair.

I learned a lot here at Harvard about new ideas in economics and politics.

I got great exposure to the advances being made in the sciences.

But humamity's greatest advances are not in its discoveries but in how those discoveries are applied to reduce inequity.