The Last Lecture

For the first time in ages I actually read a book for my own personal pleasure. Anybody who knows me knows that I am far from a reader. I pretty much only read magazines and I don't even read those very often. Anyways, I picked up The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon. If you don't know the story about him, let me bring you up to speed.

Randy Pausch was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in early 2007. If you don't know much about cancer, this is one of the types of cancer with the worst survival rates. He had done many treatments and had all the cancer removed, but when he returned for a checkup they found numerous tumors on his liver and he was given 3 to 6 months to live. He had a wife and three young children that he knew he would be leaving soon. So he decided to move his family back to Virginia to be closer to where his wife was from so she would have help once he was gone. As he was helping his wife get settled into their new home, he was asked to give what many professors give at the end of their careers, a last lecture. He struggled with the idea of whether to do it or not as he wanted to spend as much time with family as possible, but he decided to do it. There was a catch though, he required that the lecture be recorded so that he would have something to leave behind for his children. This is where his lecture took on a life of its own. The video of his lecture has spread across the web like wildfire. With so much attention being brought to it, Dr. Pausch decided to write a book about the topic of his lecture, chasing your childhood dreams. This book is how I came to know about him.

Even though Dr. Pausch passed away earlier this summer, I feel like I know him now. If you read the book you will know what I am talking about. This man completely captured how to live in his short book. Even as he knew he was dying, he continued to live as if he would be here for a long while. I feel like I am better now for reading this book and I just want to get off my butt and start doing so many of the things I have talked about. Dr. Pausch accomplished all of his childhood dreams by simply going for them and I should do the same. He was a good man and he will be missed.

If you have more interest in Dr. Pausch, his lecture, or his book you can go to www.thelastlecture.com for more information. You can view the entire lecture there and read some passages from the book.

For my nerdy computer friends, please check out what might eventually be Dr. Pausch's legacy in computer science. He created ALICE, a project that uses educational software to trick people into learning how to program. He left it in good hands and it is still going strong.