3 key takeaways from Mark Zuckerberg’s commencement speech at Harvard

Mark Zuckerberg, Founder and CEO of Facebook, was the featured speaker at the afternoon session on Harvard’s 366th commencement day on Thursday. Having dropped out of college to work on Facebook, Zuckerberg returned to Harvard to collect an honorary degree.

He shared with the audience what he had learned about the current generation and the world we’re all building together. Here are some of the key highlights from his speech.   

                                                          Mark Zuckerberg with his parents

Addressing the graduating class of 2017, Zuckerberg joked,

I’m honoured to be with you today, because you accomplished something today that I never could. If I get through this speech today, it will the first time I finished something at Harvard.

Calling himself an unlikely speaker, and not just because he dropped out, Zuckerberg noted that he was technically in the same generation as the graduating class of 2017. He said, “We walked this yard, less than a decade apart. We studied the same ideas and slept through the same lectures.”

Travelling down memory lane

Zuckerberg observed that the last few days had brought back a lot of good memories. He asked the audience how many of them remembered where they were and what they had been doing when they got their acceptance letter from Harvard.

Recalling his own experience, Zuckerberg said he was playing the video game ‘Civilization’ and ran downstairs to his dad, who then proceeded to film the young Zuckerberg read his acceptance mail.

           Zuckerberg in his old dorm room. Image credit- Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook account

Talking about the first lecture he attended at Harvard, Zuckerberg recalled how he had entered the class with his T-shirt on backwards and confused about why no-one except a student named Kang-Xing Jin, who worked on problem sets with him, would talk to him. Zuckerberg then joked, “Jin now runs a big part of Facebook. And that, class of 2017, is why you should be nice to people.”

But his favorite memory from Harvard was meeting his wife Priscilla. This happened at a party Zuckerberg’s friends threw for him when he was on the verge of being kicked out for creating Facemash. He said, “We have all started lifelong friendships here and some of us even families. That is why I’m grateful to this place.”