the last lecture by randy pausch

Randy Pausch, a 46-year-old computer-science professor at
Carnegie Mellon University, has terminal cancer and expects to
live for just a few more months.

On September 18th 2007, he said goodbye to his students and
the Pittsburgh college with one last lecture called
"How to Live Your Childhood Dreams," on his life's journey and
the lessons he's learned

The Wall Street Journal called it "the lecture of a lifetime" and
those who have seen it have more than agreed.

A beloved professor at Carnegie Mellon, Pausch got a standing
ovation from the 400-member audience before he even
opened his mouth.

"Make me earn it," he told them.


----->No Self-Pity
Pausch, a father of three, talked about his battle with pancreatic
cancer. "So in case there is anyone in the room who wandered
in and didn't know my back story, my dad always said, 'If there
is an elephant in the room, introduce him,'" Pausch said in the
lecture.

"If you look at my [CT] scan, there are approximately 10 tumors
in my liver. The doctors told me I had three to six months of
good health left. That was a month ago so you can do the math."
The diagnosis was a grim reality, but Pausch doesn't do grim
and he doesn't do self-pity.

"I've never understood pity and self-pity as an emotion," Pausch
told Diane Sawyer on "Good Morning America" today. "We have
a finite amount of time. Whether short or long, it doesn't matter.
Life is to be lived."

"We're not going to talk about spirituality and religion. Although
I will tell you that I have experienced a deathbed conversion.
I just bought a Macintosh. … Now I know I'd get 9 percent of
the audience with that," Pausch said.
He also told the audience he was in "phenomenally good health"
at the moment and even did a round of one-handed push-ups
to prove it.


----->Patience Rewarded
Pausch said he looked back at family photos and saw that when
he was a kid, he was smiling in every picture.
"So what were my childhood dreams? You may not agree with
this list, but I was there. Being in zero gravity, playing in the
National Football League, authoring an article in the World Book
Encyclopedia. I guess you can tell the nerds early," he said in
the lecture.

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visit randy pausch's website and watch the lecture at
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~pausch/
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