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Mark Rober tells MIT graduates to throw themselves into the unknown

The engineer and YouTuber advises the Class of 2023 to embrace optimism and collaboration.
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Mark Rober has attached his graduation cap to a flying drone, and he gestures to it as it flies away.
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Caption: After his 2023 Commencement address, Mark Rober affixed his mortarboard to a drone and sent it soaring over the Great Dome. His remarks and grand finale drew a standing ovation from the crowd.
Credits: Image: Gretchen Ertl
The seated graduates, wearing caps and gowns, use their cameras to take photos of the flying drone, not seen.
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Caption: At the 2023 OneMIT Commencement ceremony, engineer and YouTuber Mark Rober urged MIT’s graduating class to cultivate a sense of optimism and collaboration.
Credits: Image: Gretchen Ertl
President Sally Kornbluth, Commencement speaker Mark Rober, and MIT leadership wear academic regalia and walk in a procession surrounded by graduates.
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Caption: Stephen D. Baker ’84 MArch ’88 led the procession of faculty and administration to the stage carrying the ceremonial golden mace. MIT President Sally Kornbluth walked on his right, and Corporation Chair Diane Greene SM ’78 walked on his left.
Credits: Image: Gretchen Ertl
Sally Kornbluth, wearing academic regalia, speaks at a podium with a red and silver MIT seal on the front, with green foliage and seated faculty in background.
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Caption: “I wish you the warmest congratulations on all that you’ve achieved. And I cannot wait to see where your curiosity and sense of purpose lead you next,” President Sally Kornbluth told graduates.
Credits: Image: Gretchen Ertl
A crowded scene of MIT graduates smiling while in graduate regalia. Many wear colorful sashes.
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Caption: MIT’s Class of 2023 consists of 3,735 students, receiving 1,146 undergraduate and 2,613 graduate degrees.
Credits: Image: Gretchen Ertl
Two graduates in caps and gowns hug and smile while surrounded by other graduates. Trees and Boston skyline are in the background.
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Caption: In his 2023 Commencement address, Mark Rober urged graduates to positively impact the world while practicing “optimism combined with dedication” and fostering their relationships with others.
Credits: Image: Jake Belcher
Seven graduates in caps and gowns, with some wearing kente stoles, smile at the camera with arms raised. The columns of Killian Court are in background.
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Caption: Members of the Class of 2023 celebrated on Killian Court.
Credits: Image: Gretchen Ertl
Wearing a straw hat with a red stripe, an alumnus stands up and takes a photo while surrounded by seated alumni wearing the same hats.
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Caption: Fifty years after their own graduation, members of the Class of 1973 attended the ceremony as special guests, wearing signature hats and red jackets.
Credits: Image: Gretchen Ertl
On the steps of MIT’s main entrance, a group of graduates throw their hats in the air and pose for many spectators taking photos.
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Caption: Members of the Class of 2023 celebrated on the front steps of MIT's entrance at 77 Massachusetts Avenue.
Credits: Image: Jake Belcher

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Mark Rober has attached his graduation cap to a flying drone, and he gestures to it as it flies away.
Caption:
After his 2023 Commencement address, Mark Rober affixed his mortarboard to a drone and sent it soaring over the Great Dome. His remarks and grand finale drew a standing ovation from the crowd.
Credits:
Image: Gretchen Ertl

At today’s OneMIT Commencement ceremony, Mark Rober — engineer, inventor, and YouTuber — urged MIT’s graduating class to cultivate a sense of optimism and collaboration, and, in our uncertain world, to “pick what you think is the best path and just move forward.”

A warm and sunny Killian Court served as the setting for a festive and energetic event, with thousands of graduates in attendance with family, friends, and MIT community members. Rober encouraged graduates to positively impact the world while practicing “optimism combined with dedication” and fostering their relationships with others.

He also offered his own example of innovation in action. After wearing a conventional mortarboard during his speech, the kind graduates typically toss in the air at the end of the ceremony. Rober took it off after his remarks, attached it to a drone, and sent it soaring over the MIT’s Great Dome.

“Anybody can toss their hat in the air. We see it at every graduation — but few have dared to make it actually fly,” Rober said before his hat reached liftoff. His remarks and grand finale drew a standing ovation from the crowd.

Rober’s address was followed by remarks from MIT President Sally Kornbluth, who suggested the Institute’s new graduates cultivate “curiosity and a sense of larger purpose” while finding their pursuits in life.

“While the world — and possibly your parents — may be expecting big things from you right away, I want to give you permission, for a while, to not know,” Kornbluth said. “And to try different paths. And to change your mind. Especially in this world with new industries, new disciplines, and new jobs emerging on every frontier.”

Rober is an engineer by training who worked for NASA for almost a decade and was part of the team that landed the Curiosity rover on Mars in 2012. He has also worked for Apple. Even as his engineering career was flourishing, Rober began making videos exploring science and engineering, and in 2011 established his YouTube channel, which now has over 24 million subscribers. Rober’s videos span an array of topics from his NASA work to squirrel behavior, toothpaste explosions, shark activity, the properties of Jell-O, and much, much more.

The seated graduates, wearing caps and gowns, use their cameras to take photos of the flying drone, not seen.
At the 2023 OneMIT Commencement ceremony, engineer and YouTuber Mark Rober urged MIT’s graduating class to cultivate a sense of optimism and collaboration.
Image: Gretchen Ertl
President Sally Kornbluth, Commencement speaker Mark Rober, and MIT leadership wear academic regalia and walk in a procession surrounded by graduates.
Stephen D. Baker ’84 MArch ’88 led the procession of faculty and administration to the stage carrying the ceremonial golden mace. MIT President Sally Kornbluth walked on his right, and Corporation Chair Diane Greene SM ’78 walked on his left.
Image: Gretchen Ertl
Sally Kornbluth, wearing academic regalia, speaks at a podium with a red and silver MIT seal on the front, with green foliage and seated faculty in background.
“I wish you the warmest congratulations on all that you’ve achieved. And I cannot wait to see where your curiosity and sense of purpose lead you next,” President Sally Kornbluth told graduates.
Image: Gretchen Ertl
A crowded scene of MIT graduates smiling while in graduate regalia. Many wear colorful sashes.
MIT’s Class of 2023 consists of 3,735 students, receiving 1,146 undergraduate and 2,613 graduate degrees.
Image: Gretchen Ertl
Two graduates in caps and gowns hug and smile while surrounded by other graduates. Trees and Boston skyline are in the background.
In his 2023 Commencement address, Mark Rober urged graduates to positively impact the world while practicing “optimism combined with dedication” and fostering their relationships with others.
Image: Jake Belcher
Seven graduates in caps and gowns, with some wearing kente stoles, smile at the camera with arms raised. The columns of Killian Court are in background.
Members of the Class of 2023 celebrated on Killian Court.
Image: Gretchen Ertl
Wearing a straw hat with a red stripe, an alumnus stands up and takes a photo while surrounded by seated alumni wearing the same hats.
Fifty years after their own graduation, members of the Class of 1973 attended the ceremony as special guests, wearing signature hats and red jackets.
Image: Gretchen Ertl
On the steps of MIT’s main entrance, a group of graduates throw their hats in the air and pose for many spectators taking photos.
Members of the Class of 2023 celebrated on the front steps of MIT's entrance at 77 Massachusetts Avenue.
Image: Jake Belcher

In his address, Rober offered three distinct pieces of advice for MIT’s graduates — accompanied at times by the theme music from his videos. Roper’s first item was to “embrace naive optimism” as a way of avoiding excessive doubt and discouragement.

“It’s easier to be optimistic about your future opportunities when you’re sort of naive about what lies ahead,” Rober said, using the challenge of graduating from MIT as one example. “If you truly understood what would be required, that discouragement might have prevented you from starting.” He added that such an attitude can also aid a big life decision. “When you feel like you want to know the results before you decide, but the true outcome is simply unknowable.”

Instead, Rober suggested, “Life is like trying to cross a big flowing river with lots of rocks and boulders strewn about.” We must negotiate things one rock or boulder at a time, he emphasized, remarking that “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 M-I- freaking-T. There’s no way I could have predicted that path when I was exactly in your shoes 20 years ago.”

As a second nugget of advice, Rober advised graduates to “frame your failures” in order to learn from them without being too stressed by them — as one might in a casual setting like video gaming, where people are unselfconsciously motivated to improve.

“I feel like when you frame a challenge or a learning process in this way, you actually want to do it,” Rober said. “If you want to cross the river of life, you’re gonna get wet, you’re gonna have to backtrack, and that’s not a bug, that’s a feature.”

Thirdly, Rober advised the graduates, “foster your relationships. A sad truth about getting older is, life gets busier and busier and it gets harder and harder to make really close friends like you made here in school.”

We have evolved as cooperative creatures, he noted, and should “positively apply confirmation bias to [our] relationships. If you assume good intentions on the part of your friends and family, and you tell yourself you’re lucky to have them, your brain will naturally work to find evidence to support that.”

In an address laced with humor and quips, Rober turned serious while discussing his mother, who “took being a mom and instilling values in her children really seriously. As such, she’s the single biggest influence on my life by far.” Over a decade ago, Rober’s mother died from ALS. Even so, he said, “I love the idea that the ripples from her influence are being felt as strongly as they ever have, through the work that I try and do now.”

Kornbluth, MIT’s 18th president, was formally inaugurated a month ago, and today participated in her first Institute commencement. Issuing the president’s traditional “charge to the graduates,” she saluted the Class of 2023 for having graduated with “an involuntary double major in applied pandemic studies,” having matriculated through the Covid-19 crisis.

“You learned and created and explored in ways no one at MIT had ever done — all while caring for your friends, your families and yourselves, through a long struggle none of us were prepared for,” Kornbluth said.

She elaborated: “In an important sense, you also held together MIT. Somehow, across thousands of miles and endless hours of Zoom, you kept the culture, traditions, and values of MIT alive and thriving. … Because of you, the Institute I’ve inherited is kinder, wiser, nimbler, and more playful. You made sure that the MIT spirit — the spirit that drew you here! — would endure. And you found ways to make it even better. And for that, I cannot thank you enough.”

Observing that issuing a “charge” might sound a little too much like graduates were being given one last “grand assignment,” Kornbluth suggested graduates think of it as “a different kind of charge. A charge, as in a source of energy.”

Today, Kornbluth said, “we all live surrounded by devices and media and societal forces that tend to drain our batteries and dissipate our energy and attention. Which means that, for each of us, it has never been more important to cultivate our personal sources of renewable energy.”

For herself, Kornbluth observed, “I’ve found two infinitely renewable sources of energy: curiosity and a sense of larger purpose.” Relating a story from her time in graduate school, when she witnessed another graduate student’s “Eureka” moment in identifying a new class of cancer-causing genes, she reflected, “I’m sure he would tell you that it was one of the most exciting moments of his life. And the curiosity that led him there has renewed itself over and over, powering his own work and inspiring those around him ever since.”

In this sense, Kornbluth said, “curiosity is endlessly electrifying. And best of all is if you can find a way to harness your curiosity to a purpose larger than yourself. One of the greatest joys in life is the feeling of using your skills to the limit, to do something important for others: your community, your discipline, your institution, your country — or even the whole human family and our fragile planet. If you can do that, you will find a free, wireless charge wherever you go.”

Kornbluth concluded: “I wish you the warmest congratulations on all that you’ve achieved. And I cannot wait to see where your curiosity and sense of purpose lead you next.”

MIT’s Class of 2023 consists of 3,735 students, receiving 1,146 undergraduate and 2,613 graduate degrees. The OneMIT Commencement ceremony encompasses all graduates. MIT’s undergraduates and graduate students also have separate ceremonies in which they have their names read as they walk across stage, held from Wednesday, May 31 to Friday, June 2.

At today’s OneMIT Commencement ceremony, Diane B. Greene SM ’78, chair of the MIT Corporation, introduced the speakers, thanked Rober for “redefining the commencement speech,” and hailed the “remarkable, stunning” Class of 2023.

The event began with an alumni parade for the members of the class of 1973, celebrating their 50th anniversary reunion. It was followed by the traditional procession of administration and faculty, accompanied by the Killian Court Brass Ensemble, conducted by Kenneth Amis.

After welcoming remarks by Greene, Thea Keith-Lucas, chaplain to the Institute, gave an invocation, and the Chorallaries of MIT, a campus a cappella group, sang the national anthem.

Adam Joseph Miller, president of the Graduate Student Council from 2021 to 2023, delivered remarks as well, saying that in the face of much turmoil in the world, “We do not give up. Despite all the challenges, the future is bright. Bright, because of the brilliance of this class, and this generation.”

Miller was followed by Anna T. Sun, president of the undergraduate Class of 2023, who also sounded a note of optimism and determination.

“Now is our time,” Sun said. “We have the opportunity, the privilege, and the responsibility to create ripples that make this world a better place.”

Stephen D. Baker ’84, MArch ’88, issued the traditional brief welcome for graduates into the MIT Alumni Association. The Chorallaries sang the school song, “In praise of MIT,” moments after Greene issued closing remarks to the class of 2023.

“Yes, you’re entering a world full of problems, but it’s also an amazing and beautiful world,” Greene said. “And it is one that you will make … more beautiful and more amazing.”

Press Mentions

Boston.com

Boston.com reporter Susannah Sudborough spotlights Mark Rober’s Commencement address to the MIT Class of 2023, during which Rober provided “three bits of life advice in a humor-filled commencement speech.” Rober relayed to graduates that “if you want to cross the river of life, you’re gonna get wet. You’re gonna have to backtrack. And that’s not a bug, that’s a feature. Frame those failures and slips like a video game, and not only will you learn more and do it faster, but it will make all the successful jumps along the way that much sweeter.”

The Boston Globe

During his Commencement address at MIT, Mark Rober urged graduates to embrace their accomplishments and boldly face any challenges they encounter," writes Ashley Soebroto for The Boston Globe. Rober emphasized that “the degree you’re getting today means so much to you precisely because of all the struggle and setbacks that you’ve had to endure.” Elisa Becker-Foss, who graduated with a master’s in finance, noted that it was “very cool to be here, and after all the hard work to finally find one day to come together and celebrate.”

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