Name: Mark Rober Address to MIT Class of 2023
Uploaded: 2026-02-28T13:57:54.000Z
Duration: 19 min 24 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Good afternoon, esteemed faculty, distinguished guests, relieved parents, bored siblings, confused pets, and

of course, the 2023 graduating class of MIT.

And you know what I love to do on a beautiful, sunny 95 degree summer day?

You'd think the best engineering school on the planet could design a bigger awning for everyone.

I feel this pressure to give some timeless advice that will endure despite our world changing at an unprecedented pace.

The world is so different even from four years ago.

For example, for the undergrads, you are the first graduating class to have persevered through a global pandemic, just as this is the first commencement speech written entirely by ChatGPT.

So if I make any grammatical errors or threaten to end all human life, that did not come from me.

At this point, I should probably tell your parents who I am.

I'm Mark Rober, a former Apple and NASA mechanical engineer who became a YouTuber.

And yes, I know to some of you it sounds like I just said I quit the MBA to work at Footlocker, or I traded a Picasso for an NFT of a stoned monkey.

I sort of feel at home here because Buzz Aldrin went to mit and just like me, Buzz was a NASA engineer, only Buzz stuck with it and became one of the first humans to set foot on the moon.

Whereas I quit to become the first human to sprinkle porch pirates with glitter and fart spray, it's on YouTube.

But whether it's seeking karmic justice for package thieves or building an obstacle course for squirrels in my backyard, I plan my monthly YouTube videos really far out in advance.

In fact, I've already decided what my June 2053 video will be, and

it's going to be a collab with all of you.

Look at all the amazing things this MIT graduating class of 2023 has accomplished.

In fact, this right now is the video intro.

So if you've ever wanted to be in one of my videos, this is your chance.

Will YouTube still be around in 30 years?

The degree to which you positively impact the world is the degree to which you'll be featured in the video.

So in Order to increase your chances of making the cut, I want to give you three pieces of advice.

The first bit of advice is to moisturize when giving a commencement speech is to embrace naive optimism.

Actually, before I go any further, usually in my YouTube videos, when I get to like the juicy part, I'm not really used to this public speaking thing, so the music kicks in.

So if you'll just give me a moment and hit this button, Trust me, this is going to be better for both of us.

Naive optimism means it's easier to be optimistic about your future when you're sort of naive about what lies ahead, when you don't know what you don't know.

As an example, think back on the first week at mit how naive you were about the number of all nighters and cans of Red Bull that would be required to be sitting where you are right now.

In fact, you guys drink so much caffeine I'm surprised you're even sitting at all.

If you truly understood what would be required, that discouragement might have prevented you from even starting.

Sometimes it's an advantage not to be the expert.

With all the experience, there's no reputational risk, so it's easier to try new things and approach them from a fresh first principles approach.

Naive optimism can also help when faced with a big life decision.

When you feel like you want to know the results before you decide, but

Naive optimism means you have irrational now you've optimized.

It means you have the irrational confidence of a child learning to walk or a mom learning to TikTok.

And you pick what you think is the best path and just move forward knowing there's more than one trail that leads to the top of Mount Fuji.

It's okay that you don't know exactly what you want to be doing 20 years from now, or what you want to have accomplished.

And by the way, even if you do know it, it doesn't matter because you're wrong.

Anyone who tells you they knew they'd be where they're at 20 years ago is either lying or delusional, or a time traveler or Pat Sajak.

Life is like trying to cross a big flowing river with lots of rocks and boulders strewn about.

If you want to cross the river, you have to start on the bank and look at the first several rocks in front of you.

You can wiggle them with your toe and sort of scan a few boulders out, but

at some point, you've just got to pick one and jump.

Because the river is dynamic and always changing.

If the first rock in this metaphor is a hobby, let curiosity and passion guide your initial step.

If the first rock represents your professional career, take curiosity and passion into account.

But you should also weigh what you're good at and what the world needs.

Even if the world might not know they need it yet.

Whichever one you'd pick, the real secret is to dominate it obsessively.

Master it now from your position of more secure footing, you can re evaluate the river and you'll find you've got a few more rocks available that you couldn't even see from where you started so you could continue on your journey.

Instead of putting the pressure on myself to create some master life plan.

This attitude of naive optimism, combined with combined with dedication, enthusiasm, and

the willingness to jump from my current safe rock to the next, is what I feel has led me from college to NASA to YouTube to eventually landing on this rock, of giving the commencement speech at Mi frickin T.

There's no way I could have predicted that path when I was exactly in your shoes 20 years ago.

So cross your river one rock at a time, but

do it with a naive optimism that it's all going to work out.

If you actually knew how cold the river can get or how long it takes to recover from a sprained ankle, if you slipped, your knowledge might get in the way.

You're about to get a degree from mit, so you've obviously made some pretty great decisions so far.

Embrace your inexperience and keep taking leaps forward.

Apologies to all the civil engineering majors who have been grumbling, sitting there saying, if he wants to cross this river so bad, why does he just build a suspension bridge?

You're going to take that leap of faith, land on a rock, and

only then realize it's not as stable as your foot wiggle had predicted and you're going to fall into the river.

Sometimes that leads to my second of three pieces of advice.

To maximize your chance of positively impacting the world and making the video cut, which is to frame your failures.

Ah, you can tell it's the juicy part because the music's back.

To illustrate what I mean by this, I asked 50,000 of my YouTube followers that subscribed to my channel to play a simple computer programming puzzle that I made.

But what they didn't know is that I had served up two.

Two slightly different versions of the puzzle.

In one, if you failed the puzzle, you didn't lose any of your starting 200 points and you were prompted to try again.

Whereas in the other, if you didn't succeed, you were also prompted to try again.

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Mark Rober Address to MIT Class of 2023

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