We cannot
change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand.”
--Randy Pausch
A lot of professors give talks titled “The Last Lecture.”
Professors are asked to consider their demise and to ruminate on
what matters most to them. And while they speak, audiences can’t
help but mull the same question: What wisdom would we impart to
the world if we knew it was our last chance? If we had to vanish
tomorrow, what would we want as our legacy?
When Randy Pausch, a computer science professor at Carnegie
Mellon, was asked to give such a lecture, he didn’t have to
imagine it as his last, since he had recently been diagnosed
with terminal cancer. But the lecture he gave—“Really Achieving
Your Childhood Dreams”—wasn’t about dying. It was about the
importance of overcoming obstacles, of enabling the dreams of
others, of seizing every moment (because “time is all you
have…and you may find one day that you have less than you
think”). It was a summation of everything Randy had come to
believe. It was about living.
In this book, Randy Pausch has combined the humor,
inspiration and intelligence that made his lecture such a
phenomenon and given it an indelible form. It is a book that
will be shared for generations to come.
The Last Lecture
