I originally viewed this video over 2 years ago and found it today while researching another project. If you have never seen this video, then stop and take 10 minutes to watch it. You will be truly inspired.

Always Positive
Boomer54 Mark

P.S. Below is a short biography on Randy.


“We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand.”

~Randy Pausch

Randy Pausch was a professor of Computer Science, Human Computer Interaction, and Design at Carnegie Mellon University. From 1988 to 1997, he taught at the University of Virginia. He was an award-winning teacher and researcher, and worked with Adobe, Google, Electronic Arts (EA), and Walt Disney Imagineering, and pioneered the non-profit Alice project.

(Alice is an innovative 3-D environment that teaches programming to young people via storytelling and interactive game-playing.) He also co-founded The Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon with Don Marinelli.

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?

Dr. Pausch delivered his “Last Lecture”, titled Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams, at CMU on September 18, 2007. His last lecture was extra-special, as it was conceived after he learned that his previously known pancreatic cancer was terminal. But the lecture he gave 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.

During the lecture, Pausch was upbeat and humorous, alternating between wisecracks, insights on computer science and engineering education, advice on building multi-disciplinary collaborations, working in groups and interacting with other people, offering inspirational life lessons, and performing push-ups on stage.

His “Last Lecture” has attracted wide attention from media in the United States as well as around the world. He then co-authored a book called The Last Lectureon the same theme, which became a New York Times best-seller.

The video of the speech became an Internet hit, and was viewed over a million times in the first month after its delivery. Randy lost his battle with pancreatic cancer on July 25th, 2008.

This video is his shortened speech on how not even death can bring this man down and how the dreams he sought to come true can inspire us all.

Please pass this video from the Oprah Winfrey Show on to anyone you feel takes life for granted or just pass it to someone who loves to live.

The full video can be found by Clicking Here.

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