The Last Lecture
Why he’s here
Randy’s famous Last Lecture, Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams, has been watched tens of millions of times and has inspired millions of people to rethink their lives. It’s impossible not to tear up a little during the talk — or to walk away without feeling like he has personally called on us to step up our game. I loved his book The Last Lecture, and I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve watched his videos.
Background
Carnegie Mellon’s lecture series asked professors to speak as if it were their last chance to say what mattered most. For Randy Pausch, a beloved computer science professor and virtual reality pioneer, it wasn’t hypothetical: a month earlier, doctors had told him his pancreatic cancer was terminal. He walked on stage, did push-ups, and gave seventy-six minutes on childhood dreams, brick walls, and head fakes — with barely a word about the diagnosis itself. The talk became a phenomenon, then a book written with Jeffrey Zaslow. Randy died in July 2008, at forty-seven.
From the lecture
The line he opens the whole talk toward:
It’s not about how to achieve your dreams. It’s about how to lead your life. If you lead your life the right way, the karma will take care of itself. The dreams will come to you.
On where passion lives:
It is not the things we do in life that we regret on our death bed. It is the things we do not… You will not find that passion in things. And you will not find that passion in money… That passion will be grounded in people. It will be grounded in the relationships you have with people and what they think of you when your time comes.
On teaching:
Do not tell people how to live their lives. Just tell them stories. And they will figure out how those stories apply to them.
On honesty:
If I could only give three words of advice, they would be “tell the truth.” If I got three more words, I’d add: “all the time.”
And the ending — the second head fake:
Did you figure out the second head fake? This talk’s not for you. It’s for my kids.
Go to the source
Watch the full lecture →
Carnegie Mellon’s official recording (76 minutes, worth every one)
Read The Last Lecture →
The book he wrote with Jeffrey Zaslow, for his kids
Visit Randy’s page at Carnegie Mellon →
Kept online by the university, as he left it
More on Randy in Inspirations →
His best quotes, interviews, and where to learn more