When I graduated from eighth grade, my class got a pizza party. When the students at Belle Haven Middle School in Menlo Park, Calif. graduated, they got Mark Zuckerberg. Zuckerberg, or Mark Zuckerman, as the principal accidentally introduced him as, spoke at the eighth-grade graduation relaying some of the most important life lessons he’s learned during his 27 years on this planet.
Mr. Z, as the principal also called Zuckerberg, is moving the Facebook offices to Menlo Park and said the company is going to be neighbors with the school. Zuckerberg stressed three main things in his speech that he claims society got wrong: There are no shortcuts in life, great relationships are extremely important, and do what you love.
Zuckerberg started by saying that everything that’s worth doing is actually really hard and take s a lot of work. He said society often isn’t quite right when things in movies and TV appear to have come to fruition without much work. Mr. Z alluded to the Social Network movie in one of his examples. He said that a film about a kid in college with an idea that became this big business overnight “couldn’t be further from the truth.” He said it’s “not about a single moment of inspiration or brilliance.” Instead, it’s about years and years of hard work and practice. He said that a lot of building a company or product like Facebook is just about determination and believing that you can do it. He stressed that it’s actually hard work that underlies everything that you do, and “there’s no shortcuts.”
Secondly, Zuckerberg stressed the value of friendship and forming good relationships with people you can trust. He said that a lot of people will tell you to just focus on school and grades while you’re growing up, but that it’s important to focus on having friends and really enjoying yourself, too. Zuckerberg said that a lot of times the experts tell you that you can’t do something even when you think you can. He said this is another thing that society gets wrong a lot. Zuckerberg said great friendships are what makes life a lot of fun and meaningful and enables you do to awesome things.
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Lastly, Zuck told the students to “do what you love.” He said that you can set your minds to a lot of different things, and you can overcome things you don’t like doing, but that it’s a lot easier to focus on challenges that you actually enjoy doing. “If you do stuff that you love, it’s a lot more meaningful and takes on a lot more purpose,” said Mr. Z.
It all sounds so easy coming from Zuckerberg, the world’s youngest billionaire. But who knows, maybe some of these eighth graders will be working with Zuck in a few years.
