Larry Ellison shares what dropping out of college and getting divorced taught him about success

my dream was to go to the USC medical school get married raise a family and practice medicine in Los Angeles growing up in a lower middle class community on the south side of Chicago medicine was considered the Pinnacle of of professions Noble and Humane virtually everyone important in my life my family my teachers my girlfriend wanted me to be a doctor over time their dreams became my dreams they convinced me I should be a doctor but as hard as I tried I couldn't do it after a few difficult and unhappy years as a Premed student it became painfully clear to me that I did not like the courses I was taking I thought my comparative anatomy class was a perversely pointless form of psychological torture especially the dissection labs and I just could not make myself study something that didn't interest me at the time I thought I lacked discipline and that I was selfish maybe so but whatever the underlying reasons I was unable to make myself into the person that I thought I should be so I decided to stop trying I was 21 years old when I dropped out of college packed everything I owned jeans t-shirts leather jacket guitar into my car and drove from Chicago to Berkeley California during my California Springs and Summers I spent most of my days in the high sieras in yusan Valley working as a a river guide and a rock climbing instructor I loved those jobs but unfortunately they didn't pay that well so I also got a job working a couple of days a week as a computer programmer back in Berkeley I had learned to program in college I didn't love programming but it was fun and I was good at it and computer PR programming gave me the same kind of satisfaction as solving math problems and playing yes both things I enjoyed be before I became a confused teenager at this point in my life I thought I was making real progress on my journey of self-discovery I had found a cause I had a couple of jobs that I love and one that was fun and paid the bills I was pretty happy with my life my wife was not what she saw was was a College Dropout who spent too much time in the mountains doing foolish things she wanted me to work full-time as a computer programmer or go back to college and finish my degree we compromised sort of I started taking classes at UC Berkeley I took several classes but the only one I can remember was a sailing class taught at Berkeley Marina once again I fell in love and began a lifelong affair with the Limitless omnipotent Pacific Ocean when my class was over I wanted to buy a sailboat my wife said this was the single stupidest idea she had ever heard in her entire life she accused me of being irresponsible and she told me I lacked ambition she kicked me out and then she divorced me this was a pivotal moment in my life my family was still mad at me for not going to medical school and now my wife was divorcing me because I lacked ambition it looked like a re reoccurrence of the same old problem once again I was unable to live up to the expectations of others but this time I was not disappointed in myself for failing to be the person they thought I should be their dreams and my dreams were different I would never confuse the two of them again throughout my 20s I continued experimenting trying different things racing bikes and boats and constantly changing jobs it didn't take me long to discover that the most interesting and rewarding programming jobs were found at a cluster of companies located south of Stanford University and North of San Jose Silicon Valley was in its infancy I was still in my 20s when I went to work for my first Silicon Valley startup amdall where we developed the world's fastest Mainframe computer faster than anything IBM had I was the Vice President in charge with software development it was all very Cutting Edge and challenging and cool I like my work most of the time but I didn't love it I searched and I searched but I just could not find a software engineering job that I loved as much as I loved sailing so I tried to create one I put together a plan to start my own company that way I could completely control my work environment I would hire the most talented programmers I knew and we would all work together on the most interesting and challenging software projects my gr my goal was to create the perfect job for me a job I truly love I never I never expected the company to grow Beyond 50 people so maybe I really did lack ambition or Vision back then I don't know it was a long time ago and I was very young today Oracle employs around 150,000 people but when I started it was not my intention to build a big company what happened well at first we did exactly what we set out to do hired the most talented software engineers in Silicon Valley we assembled an Allstar team of gifted programmers who were among the best in the world at what they they did that team plus one crazy idea gave birth to a giant company I call it a crazy idea because at the time everyone told me it was a crazy idea the idea was to build the world's first relational database several theoretical papers about relational databases had already been published and IBM was building a prototype in their research lab but back then the collective wisdom of computer experts was that while relational databases could be built they would never be fast enough to be useful I thought all those so-called computer experts were wrong and when you start telling people but all the experts are wrong at first they call you ER an and then they say you're crazy so remember this graduates when people start telling you that you're crazy you just might be on to the most important innovation in your life remember this graduates in a constantly changing world what is possible is a moving Target don't be afraid to experiment and try lots of different things and don't let the experts discourage you when you when you challenge the status quo each of you has a chance to discover who you are rather than who you should be a chance to live your dreams not the dreams of others soon many of you will begin a new job I hope it interests you and challenges you and rewards you with a sense of purpose and satisfaction but if it doesn't keep searching it's out there it might take a while but keep searching until you find a job that ignites your passions like I did even better you just might find one that you love thank you and congratulations