the last lecture

February 28, 2008

While channel-surfing the other night, i came across this guy on Oprah who was giving a talk/lecture of sorts. i just caught the last several minutes of it; but luckily, it’s on youtube to be viewed in its entirety:

The speaker was Randy Pausch, a professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University and the lecture that he was giving was a reprise of a much longer lecture called "Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams", which he delivered in front of an audience of 400 in CMU. It was a part of a series of lectures called "The Last Lecture". The premise is: What if you knew you were going to die? What wisdom are you going to impart to your students/audience in the last lecture you are going to give? For Randy Pausch though, it was not a hypothetical situation because in August of 2007 he was told that the pancreatic cancer, which he was diagnosed with the previous year, had metastasized to his liver and spleen. He was given 3 to 6 months to live.

As it plays out, the talk is like an extended version of something like The Desiderata… or Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen)… or Everything I Needed To Know, I Learned In Kindergarten. It’s a nice and inspirational talk, and you can’t help but just respect and be amazed at this guy. But the thing that gets to me the most is that last part of the video above. He says "It’s great that so many people have benefitted from this lecture, but the truth of the matter is that I didn’t even really give it to the 400 or so people at the Carnegie Mellon who came. I only wrote this lecture for three people…" he then proceeds to switch his presentation to the last slide, which shows a photo of him carrying his three little sons, and as his eyes start to well up, he finishes his talk "…and when they’re older, they’ll watch it. Thank you."

As of today, around six months from the time he was told that he had3 to 6 months to live, Randy Pausch is still alive and in good condition. I’ve done a good amount of browsing about him and found that the entire lecture he gave at CMU is actually also available for viewing on youtube, the transcript of the lecture is also available on the net, and he has an entry in wikipeida.

Amazing guy, imho.