Monday, March 17, 2008

Dr. Randy Pausch's Last Lecture (Updated)

Pancreatic cancer is one of the bad ones, aggressive and painful but mercifully fast. But Dr. Pausch has become a role model for how best to play a terrible hand when life deals you those cards. Last week he went to Washington to testify before Congress.
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[September 26, 2007] Last week's lecture by Dr. Pauch has taken the country by a storm. The Wall Street Journal released yet another little video covering the story after the story.
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Here is the second video for those who have already seen the first (below).
If by now the reader still is not in the loop, nothing I can write will matter. I watched the lecture in its entirety Sunday morning and it was as inspirational as going to church but without the liturgy.
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(For the record , I also went to church...this is not, nor is it intended to be, a substitute for faith. Dr. Pausch is into living, learning, serving, loving and having fun. And nothing he says suggests for a moment that church and faith are not important.)
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According to the follow-up video, the lecture has been released to public domain to stand as Dr. Pausch's legacy.





At Carnegie Mellon...Dr. Pausch's speech was more than just an academic exercise. The 46-year-old father of three has pancreatic cancer and expects to live for just a few months. His lecture, using images on a giant screen, turned out to be a rollicking and riveting journey through the lessons of his life.

This story is too good to miss. This is all about integrity, staying on task and what it means to live your life to the fullest, no matter how long you live or don't.

H/T The Wandering Jew for the link. (Interesting. All those millions of WSJ readers already know. I'm from a different level of information sharing that gets news backwards...by blogging and reading the aggregator.)

If you don't have time to go to the Carnegie-Mellon site and watch the whole lecture (It's over an hour and a half) then you need to look closely at your time management practices. This is time well-invested. You don't have to watch the whole lecture at one sitting. You can stop, go back later and drag the timer icon to where you left off. No excuses.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for posting the link! I saw Dr. Pausch's lecture last weekend and wanted to share it with some people at work.

Anonymous said...

Is Dr. Pausch a believer in Christ ... haven't heard much about his faith

Hoots said...

When I saw the WSJ video I knew instantly that the Randy Pausch story would spread like fire. I did something I rarely do: sent links to this post to a handful of people who I thought might be interested. (Email spam is not my style.)

One dedicated Christian man told me after looking at the WSJ clip he wasn't interested in hearing the man's lecture because, in his words, "he has the mentality of a suicide bomber" because he made that remark about a deathbed converson to buy a Macintosh.

Very unfortunate. My friend is missing out on a powerful message of hope and exctiememt.

As a Christian I understand your concern, but my view is that public curiosity is inappropriate. I found a simple statement of appreciation at his personal website for the members of their church, but that is the only printed reference I have seen to his faith.

Clearly he's going out living, not preaching. Dr. Pausch's example of hope and excitement, living life to the fullest is, after all, at the core of the Christian message, formal creeds notwithstanding.

Anonymous said...

Hellejuah to you "hoots". u r true and i back u up. this is life and it really would show alot of us Christians what we need to do while lviing...without fear.and in God's mercy...this iwll definately teach those...who are and arent Christians....

Hoots said...

I knew Dr. Pausch had died when I saw a spike in traffic to this post today. He showed many people how to live. Although he never spoke of it, he must have been in a lot of pain. An excellent role model for us all, now he is at peace.

Hoots said...

Thanks to YouTube I have embedded the whole lecture (without the introductory remarks available at the Carnegie Mellon site) for those who want to watch. It's over an hour and might be the best hour of your day.