Monday, October 20, 2008

Randy Pausch's Last Lecture - a must view!



I was cleaning up my emails when I rediscovered this. I've read the transcript, watched the full length video - crying and laughing - so I Googled to see if the inevitable had occurred and it had on 25th July 2008 (Randy ended up living for ten months not just six).
I got so much out of his lecture I wanted to share it on my Blog.

Here is a brief on what it is all about:
Randy Pausch's Last Lecture
With his life drawing to a close, Professor Randy Pausch, a father of three, reveals what matters most.
Many universities ask beloved professors to give their version of a "last lecture" – what they’d say if they were summing up a lifetime of learning and teaching. But at Pennsylvania’s Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh on September 18, 2007, Randy Pausch gave a last lecture unlike any other. A year earlier, he’d been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, a deadly, fast-moving disease. Just weeks before the lecture, he had learnt that cancer had attacked his liver and spleen. The prognosis: Pausch had less than six months to live. For most people with three children under six, that death sentence would have killed all optimism. But in his talk, the distinguished professor of computer science, human-computer interaction, and design touched only briefly on his achievements, most notably as founder of the Alice Project, which lets young students tell their stories in three dimensions. (The name was inspired by Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.) Pausch acknowledged his disease but refused to dwell on it. Instead, he delivered a stunningly upbeat, joke-filled lecture about the importance of achieving your childhood dreams, managing time and, above all, loving every minute of life. Millions have watched his lecture on the internet and TV.

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