ABDULLAH AZZAM
Steven Paul Jobs was born on February 24, 1955, to a pair of graduate students who gave him up for adoption because their parents did not want them to marry. Steve was adopted at birth by Clara and Paul Jobs. His mother taught him to read before he went to school. Steve and his father would work on electronics in the family garage, taking apart and reassembling televisions, radios and stereos.
Steve was quite a turbulent child. He really didn’t care about school for some time — until he reached the 4th grade, and had Imogene “Teddy” Hill as a teacher.
She was one of the saints of my life. She taught an advanced fourth grade class, and it took her about a month to get hip to my situation. She bribed me into learning.
She did bribe him, with candy and $5 bills from her own money. He quickly became hooked — so much so that he skipped the 5th grade and went straight to middle school, namely Crittenden Middle School. It was in a poor area. Most kids did not work much there, they were rather fond of bullying other kids, such as the young Steve. One day he came home and declared that if he wasn’t transferred to another school, he would stop going to school altogether. He was 11. Paul and Clara complied, and the Jobses moved to the cozier city of Los Altos, so that Steve could go to Cupertino Junior High. This proved to be decisive for Steve’s future.
In elementary school Steve was bored, and he often played pranks. In fourth grade, he was tested and scored on a high-school sophomore level. He went to Reed College in Oregon, but dropped out after six months. He stayed at Reed and went to some classes that interested him, slept on the floors of friends’ rooms, and got meals at a Hare Krishna temple. He later became a Buddhist. Calligraphy was one class that he enjoyed, and he said that it influenced his interest in design and the use of elegant fonts on Apple computers.
As Steve was growing up in Los Altos, he became increasingly