If you have not yet seen Randy Pausch’s last academic lecture, you are in for an inspiring, thought-provoking, and possibly life changing experience.

In academia, the last lecture is a tradition where lecturers (before retiring or leaving the institution) give one final presentation that encapsulates what matters to them the most. It’s the professor’s last opportunity, as staff, to impart bits of wisdom and knowledge to his/her students.

About Randy: “Randolph Frederick Pausch (October 23, 1960 – July 25, 2008) was an American professor of computer science and human-computer interaction and design at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Pausch learned that he had pancreatic cancer, a terminal illness, in September of 2006. He gave an upbeat and adage-laden lecture entitled “The Last Lecture: Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams” on September 18, 2007 at Carnegie Mellon, which became a popular YouTube video and led to other media appearances. He then co-authored a book called The Last Lecture on the same theme, which became a New York Times best-seller. Pausch died of complications from pancreatic cancer on July 25, 2008.” (from Wikipedia)

For more:

Randy’s personal webpage (Carnegie Mellon): http://download.srv.cs.cmu.edu/~pausch/Randy/oldRandyPage.html

Last Lecture page:  www.thelastlecture.com