Recently, my sister told me to check out "this guy, a professor dying of pancreatic cancer, giving his last lecture before he died." I found his video on YouTube pretty quickly...it's had over three million views.
This man, Randy Pausch, is phenomenal. He was a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon University and it was clear how much he loved doing his job. He was also a clearly loving husband and father of three. Throughout the video, Pausch is heartbreakingly upbeat and positive, declaring from the start he will not be talking about cancer at all because he's "talked enough about cancer."
The main focuses of the lecture are following childhood dreams and enabling others to achieve their dreams as well. His own dreams included being in the NFL, becoming a Disney Imagineer, flying in zero gravity, winning stuffed animals, and meeting Captain Kirk. The first half of the lecture follows his achievement of his own dreams and how hard he had worked to succeed. His quest to become a Disney Imagineer was great; he ended up working on the Aladdin virtual reality ride in Disneyworld but declined a permanent job offer to become a professor. He even gets a chance to fly in zero gravity and meet William Shatner (aka Captain Kirk)!
The second half of the lecture focused on helping other people follow their childhood dreams. At CMU, Pausch and his colleagues created a project for their students to create different virtual reality worlds and showcase them in front of huge audiences. Pausch really did help others do exactly what they wanted to be doing. He mentioned one student whose childhood dream was to work on the next Star Wars movie...and he achieved it.
Pausch was extremely inspirational. It was amazing to listen to this man, who had no regrets and who really enjoyed his life. He declared, "I don't know how to not have fun. I'm dying and I'm having fun." His attitude in the face of fatal cancer was unbelievable. However, you don't feel sorry for the guy at all, you actually kind of envy him. His entire message is an important one; people should be living like there's no tomorrow.
I don't want to give it away but the end is the very best part. Throughout the lecture he talks about something he learned playing football called a "head fake", which means that while you're doing one thing you're actually learning something else. Basically, you're having fun while you're learning (a philosophy he applied to teaching his students). At the end he asks the audience, "did you see the head fake" in the lecture? To which he responds that his lecture was not about achieving childhood dreams but about "how to live your life." And then he asks the audience whether they spotted the second headfake...and he says "this lecture wasn't for you, it was for my kids."
"Brickwalls are there for a reason: they let us prove how badly we want things."
-Randy Pausch
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