Happy Practicing: Address to the Grade 8 Graduates
June 19, 2009

So, what do Bill Gates and the Beatles have in common?  According to the Canadian writer and thinker, Malcolm Gladwell, they share a common connection to what he calls “the 10,000 hour rule.”  In addition to their natural talent, Bill Gates and the Beatles put countless hours (more than 10,000, apparently) into the preparation that led to their later success.

Take the example of the Beatles.  When they hit the world stage in 1964, the Beatles already had benefited from long years of intensive practice.  Five years earlier, when they were still a struggling high school rock band, they had been invited to play in Hamburg, Germany.  In Hamburg’s night clubs, they preformed seven days a week and sometimes as many as eight hours a day.  By 1964, they had performed live an estimated 1,200 times, and they had become highly skilled musicians.  “They were no good on stage when they went there, and they were very good when they came back,” recalled their manager.  “When they came back, they sounded like some one else.  It was the making of them.”  And the rest, of course, is history.  The Beatles went on to become the world’s most successful rock and roll band.

The Bill Gates story is quite similar.  In 1968, when he was a Middle School student at Seattle’s Lakeside School, Bill Gates joined a computer club.  By his grade 8 year, he was doing real-time programming, and quite literally, was living in the computer room. After school, he began hanging out at the computer centre at the University of Washington.  Apparently, in one seven month period in 1971, he logged 1,600 hours of computer time.  His favourite trick was to sneak out of the house after his parents had gone to bed, so that he could work in the university’s computer lab when it was empty between 3:00 and 6:00 a.m.  As his mother recalled many years later, “we always wondered why it was so hard for him to get up in the morning.”  According to Gladwell, the five years between grade 8 and his high school graduation were Bill Gates’ Hamburg. He honed the skills and developed the knowledge that allowed him, following his sophomore year, to drop out of Harvard and to set up his first software company. By that time, he had been programming non-stop for seven consecutive years; that’s well beyond 10,000 hours!

There is a lesson here, I think, for all of us, particularly our grade 8 graduates.  In one way or another, each of you is gifted.  You may be a person of great integrity, a brilliant musician, an effective leader, a keen athlete, a perceptive history student, a good friend, or a talented mathematician.  Whether you realize it yet or not, each of you has a gift, and it is your responsibility to use that gift in order to help make the world a better place.

And, just as importantly, as you move on in life, the key to your ongoing success will be your commitment and your dedication.  That is how you will develop and ultimately fulfill your own unique potential.  I’m reminded of our great school’s twin mottos – Excelsior – Ever Higher and Velle Est Posse – Where There’s a Will, There’s a Way. Set lofty goals for yourself, and then work hard to transform them into reality. And who knows?  You may be the next Bill Gates, John Lennon or Paul McCartney.

I’m mindful of the advice given by one of my heroes, the great nineteenth-century thinker and doer, Henry David Thoreau:

If you advance confidently in the direction of your dreams, and endeavor to live the    life which you have imagined, you will meet with a success unexpected in common hours…
If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be.  Now put the foundations under them.

Grade 8 graduates – I sincerely hope that you have enjoyed your time in the Middle School.  In many ways, it has been your Hamburg.  It is where you have honed the skills and developed the knowledge that will allow you to be successful in your high school years and beyond. During your time in the Middle School, you have developed and matured in ways that you may not yet fully appreciate.  You have helped to make our school and our community better places, and I hope that we, in turn, have helped you to become a better person.  As you move on to high school, don’t forget the debt you owe to your parents, as well as to your teachers and coaches.  You will be missed, but we all will enjoy following your progress as you make your way through the Senior School and beyond.

Good luck, happy practicing, and remember—advance confidently in the direction of your dreams!