Randy Pausch Last Lecture: Achieving Your Childhood Dreams

Carnegie Mellon Professor Randy Pausch, who is dying from pancreatic cancer, gave his last lecture at the university Sept. 18, 2007, before a packed McConomy Auditorium. In his moving talk, "Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams," Pausch talked about his lessons learned and gave advice to students on how to achieve their own career and personal goals. For more, visit www.cmu.edu/randyslecture.

"Journeys" are special University Lectures in which Carnegie Mellon faculty members share their reflections on their journeys -- the everyday actions, decisions, challenges and joys that make a life.

For those of you who aren't familiar with who Dr. Randy Pausch is, the short story goes like this:

He is a happily married man with three very young children. He spent years working for Disney as an Imagineer who helped them develop some of their theme park attractions. He then went on to teach at Carnegie-Mellon University in Pennsylvania where he still is to this day.

Abruptly, his life took a turn for the worse when he got cancer and fought it off after years of treatment. The cancer has since returned and has near-totally corupted several vital organs leaving him with mere months to live.

This video is his shortened speech on how not even death can bring this man down and how the dreams he sought to come true can inspire us all.

Several quotes I really appreciated from his talk:

• Brick walls are there for a reason: they let us prove how badly we want things. They are not there to keep you out. They keep other people out.


• When somebody is going to ride you for two hours, that’s because they care enough to make you better. When you’re doing a bad job and nobody points it out to you, that’s when they’ve given up on you.

This video below is a shorter version shown on Oprah which I was first shown during one of my staff meeting. Fate has it that I came across it as I was channel-surfing at home one evening and I got to see the whole show in its context.



This video below is a much longer version. It is the original version that Prof. Pausch gave in Carnegie Mellon University.



So, feel free to pass this video on to anyone you feel takes life for granted or just pass it to someone who loves to live.