Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs knew from a young age that he was adopted, however, his search for belonging continued throughout his childhood, young adulthood, and professional career. After his birth parents gave him up for adoption, his adoptive parents did everything within their means to provide Jobs with a solid educational foundation. As Jobs became increasingly interested in technology by means of mechanics and electronics, his adoptive parents soon realized that he was intellectually gifted—in time, Jobs himself would realize this as well. According to Isaacson, Jobs “grew up not only with a sense of having once been abandoned, but also with a sense that he was special. In his own mind, that was more important in the formation of his personality” (12). Becoming someone exceptional became one of the primary driving factors in his life. For Jobs, in order to belong to the world he was searching for through his interests, being special was crucial.

As Jobs went off to college, he joined the community at Reed College under the pretense that he had somehow come from nowhere: “I didn’t want anyone to know I had parents. I wanted to be like an orphan who had bummed around the country on trains and just arrived out of nowhere, with no roots, no connections, no background” (34).