Saturday, April 26, 2008

The Last Lecture

A few weeks ago I came across a video of a professor from Carnegie Mellon University by the name of Randy Pausch who is currently suffering from a terminal illness. The university has a lecture series entitled "The Las Lecture" where the professor, if given only one day left on this earth, gives to his students what is most important to him. The university asked Prof. Pausch (before his illness was terminal) to present his last lecture. Once he found that his illness was terminal, this last lecture brought on a whole new meaning. Below is a video of that last lecture.



If you were given the opportunity to speak to all that means something to you on your last day what would you say? I was face with this question last night as I came across the book of Randy's last lecture. I haven't been able to get that question out of mind. So, I'm working on my last lecture. The lessons and thoughts that I have for my family, friends and colleagues. No, I don't have terminal disease, but time is all I have and I may find one day that I have a lot less of it.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

How inspiring Randy Pausch is! If you liked "The Last Lecture", another fantastic memoir I just read and highly recommend is "My Stroke of Insight" by Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor. Her TEDTalk video (ted.com) has been seen as many times as The Last Lecture I think, and Oprah did 4 shows on her book, so there are a lot of similarities. In My Stroke of Insight, there's a happy ending though. It's an incredible story! I hear they're making it into a movie.