Last September, I had the good fortune of stumbling (via news site Slashdot) upon a talk given by a professor at Carnegie Mellon University. A snappy headline caught my eye, and I clicked the link to watch the video. Little did I know that I would still be watching that video over an hour later, laughing, learning, and bawling my eyes out. It was a Friday night, and I can still remember my roommates returning home to find me sobbing on the couch, eyes glued to my 17-inch computer screen.
“What are you watching?”
“A lecture. This guy. He’s a professor,” was all I could manage to say.
They didn’t get it at first, but once they started watching, they were hooked, too. Clips of the lecture (and even a 10-minute reprise on Oprah) have made their way around the Internet, but my favorite version is the original, about an hour and 20 minutes long. Delivered on September 20, 2007, Pausch was ostensibly participating in the academic tradition of last lectures – if you were dying and had just one last talk to give, what would you say?
Sadly, in this case, the question wasn’t hypothetical. Just weeks before, Pausch had been given three to six months to live. His pancreatic cancer, which had been aggressively treated at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, had returned, and it was terminal. Despite this unimaginable news, Pausch appeared in good spirits throughout the lecture – poking fun at himself, a lifelong nerd; imparting advice and sharing anecdotes; even dropping to the ground and pounding out a few push-ups.
Like a great deal of others who watched the original talk, I became a compulsive Randy Pausch Googler. I frequently checked his website for updates, pictures, and news. I regularly scanned Google News for articles or mentions of the professor. As a researcher very interested in virtual reality myself, I even started my own after-school computer class, teaching Storytelling Alice to middle-school students. Developed by Pausch and his team, ALICE is an innovative program that teaches students object-oriented computer programming by allowing them to create their own characters, locations, and animations.
When I found out “The Last Lecture” would be released as a book, I pre-ordered it from Amazon.com and promptly read it in one sitting. I read it to the students in my sixth grade class, emphasizing Dr. Pausch’s messages of hard work and unfailing determination. Remember that brick walls are there for a reason – to let us prove how badly we want something. Wait long enough, and a person’s good side will reveal itself to you. Don’t complain, just work harder. I read the stories and talked about the ideas, but I glossed over one aspect of the story: the fact that he was dying.
You see, even though Dr. Pausch ‘outed’ the elephant in the room in the early minutes of his talk, I just didn’t want to accept it. As I checked his medical update page, I hoped against hope (along with millions of others) that a miracle cure would present itself, that he had been somehow misdiagnosed, that he would be one of those outliers who somehow outlived terminal cancer. But alas, today, July 25, 2008, the world lost one of the good guys. Randy Pausch passed away early this morning in Chesapeake, Virginia.
I am sad today, and I know that all over the world, people are mourning along with Randy’s friends and family, which includes a wife and three very young children. However, as we mourn, may we also honor Randy’s zest for life and love. Since I watched that speech on a warm September night, my life has changed. I was immediately wrapped up into a moment, into a momentum, around this amazing story. All across the world, people have been inspired by his words and actions.
As a terminal cancer patient, he had a cameo in an upcoming Star Trek film, appeared on Oprah, played football with the Pittsburgh Steelers, and served as an advocate for pancreatic cancer research and funding. But Randy lived like this long before he knew he was dying. He never lost the values imparted to him by his parents and mentors, always prizing people over things, working relentlessly, and encouraging honesty, creativity, and determination. His renowned career included achievement as one of the pioneers of virtual reality research, the development of ALICE, and stints at Disney Imagineering and Electronic Arts (EA). With Don Marinelli, Pausch founded the Entertainment Technology Center (ETC) at Carnegie Mellon, where a new generation of game creators, designers, engineers, artists, and other entertainment professionals is developing.
Although Randy Pausch’s time on Earth has come to an end, an inconceivable number of people have been profoundly impacted by his lecture and his life. Ever the head fake artist, Pausch closes the lecture with a sweet, emotional truth: the lecture isn’t for us. If we are helped by it, that’s great. But it’s really for three people: Dylan, Logan, and Chloe. Randy Pausch is an inspiration, a role model, a teacher, a coach. To them, he’s simply ‘Dad.’ Luckily for us, their father is generous. So grab the book. Watch the speech. Tell the truth, work hard, have fun. Live your life right, and as Randy says, “The dreams will come to you.”
