'The Last Lecture'

I must admit I had not heard of Randy Pausch until I read his obituary in The Guardian last night. Randy Pausch was an academic and scientist who died last week from pancreatic cancer.

Randy became famous for making ‘The Last Lecture’ which became an internet phenomenon.

The Last Lecture series at Carnegie Mellon University was designed to let academics give a lecture to students, imagining it was their last, to leave them with an important message. This took on added significance when Randy gave his lecture in September 2007 with the knowledge that he was dying from cancer and he had been given months to live. In the lecture he talks about the importance of having and enabling childhood dreams and of his determination to ‘have fun today, tomorrow and every other day I have’.

Randy Pausch’s mantra was that ‘we cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand’.

See the lecture here