The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon University, recounts his life lessons and experiences. Written with reporter Jeffrey Zaslow, the best-selling book is an expanded version of a “Last Lecture” Pausch gave in 2007, after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.
The “Last Lecture” series was a tradition in which professors presented their philosophy of life, as if it were their last chance to share what was important to them. It truly was a last chance for Pausch, who had only months to live. But more importantly, the lecture was his legacy for his three young children, who would grow up without him there to guide them.
His book and lecture, which went viral and has been viewed by millions, are about living your dreams. (View the lecture at https://www.cmu.edu/randyslecture/)
In summer 2006, Pausch experienced pain in his upper abdomen followed by jaundice. He at first thought he had hepatitis, but CT scans showed a tumor on his pancreas. Of all cancers, pancreatic cancer is the most deadly; half die within six months of diagnosis and 96% die within five years.
Pausch approached his treatment like a scientist, asking questions and seeking data. His goal was to live as long as possible for his family and to that end, he was willing to endure any potentially effective treatment no matter how miserable it made him feel. He underwent a complicated surgery called a “Whipple” procedure, which removed his gallbladder and part of his pancreas, stomach, and small intestine. This was followed by chemotherapy and radiation. However, tests seven months later, in August 2007, showed that the cancer had metastasized to his liver. His doctor said he probably had three to six months of good health remaining.
The day before the checkup, Pausch had told his wife Jai that regardless of the test results, for the moment, it felt great to be alive and be with her. That’s how he decided to live the rest of his life—focusing on the moment.
Pausch and his older sister grew up in a middle-class community in Columbia, Maryland (suburban Baltimore), the children of an English teacher and an auto insurance salesman. He credited his positive childhood for the fact that he went on to achieve his dreams and live a fulfilling life.
One of the biggest ways his parents impacted him was by encouraging his imagination. For example, they allowed Pausch and his sister to paint his bedroom while he was in high school. Among other things, he painted a quadratic equation, an elevator (the house actually had just one floor), a periscope, a Pandora’s box, a rocket ship, and chess pieces.
Pausch had six childhood dreams: Winning the biggest stuffed animals at the carnival, playing in the NFL, writing an entry in the World Book Encyclopedia, being Captain Kirk of Star Trek, experiencing zero gravity, and becoming a designer or “Imagineer” for Disney.
Pausch never lost touch with his childhood dreams and, in various ways, he achieved them all.
He titled his Last Lecture “Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams.” In it, he advised listeners to carry around a Crayon as a reminder of childhood aspirations.
As a boy with an interest in science, Pausch loved the TV show Star Trek and its hero, Captain Kirk—as well as the show’s space-age gadgets, including pocket communications devices much like today’s smartphones. Pausch met his idol when actor William Shatner, the original Captain Kirk, visited his virtual reality lab at Carnegie Mellon. Shatner wanted to learn about the latest technology for a book he was co-authoring about Star Trek devices that foreshadowed real technological advances.
When Shatner later learned of Pausch’s diagnosis, he sent Pausch a signed photo of Kirk, inscribed with a line from the Star Trek movie The Wrath of Khan: “I don’t believe in the no-win scenario.”
Pausch made a memorable childhood trip to Disneyland in 1969 when he was eight. As his interest in science and engineering developed, he dreamed of designing Disney rides and attractions. Years later, after receiving a sabbatical for virtual reality research, he talked Disney into accepting him for six months to work on a secret Aladdin attraction involving a magic carpet ride.
He had some trouble getting a Carnegie Mellon dean to approve such an unconventional study request, but he persisted and his experience as an “Imagineer” was a highlight of his life. He wore his Disney Imagineer’s shirt when he delivered his Last Lecture.
Besides discussing the importance of pursuing your childhood dreams, Pausch used his Last Lecture to recount other lessons he’d learned or taught throughout his life, including:
The Value of Honest Feedback: Pausch could be arrogant and tactless, but on one occasion, a mentor put him in his place. While Pausch was an undergraduate at Brown University, the faculty member told him it was a shame that people found him arrogant because it would hold him back in the future. Pausch concluded that he’d just been tactfully told he was a jerk. He came to appreciate those in his life who gave him honest feedback and he tried to do the same for his students.
People Over Things: Before he was married, Pausch enjoyed being an uncle to his sister’s two children. Once, when the kids were seven and nine, he picked them up in his new convertible. As they climbed in, their mother warned them not to get it dirty. Hearing this, Pausch opened a can of soda and calmly poured it onto the cloth-covered back seats. His message was that a car is just a possession—and people are more important than things. Later that weekend, when his nephew got the flu and threw up on the car seat, Pausch was glad he’d delivered that message.
Brick Walls Are Opportunities: Pausch learned to overcome obstacles in his academic career and came to believe that when you run into brick walls, they’re an opportunity for you to demonstrate how badly you want something.
But at age 37, he encountered one of his most formidable challenges—winning over the woman who eventually became his wife. He met Jai at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, when he was invited to give a lecture. She was a graduate student there in comparative literature. They hit it off, but when he asked her to move to Pittsburgh, she refused him multiple times. At one point, she told him she didn’t love him. Distraught, he called his parents for advice and they told him to be patient and respectful of her feelings. Eventually, Jai realized she loved him and moved to Pittsburgh, where they were married. He’d used the brick wall of her resistance demonstrate how much he wanted a life with her.
Be a Tigger, Not an Eeyore: Pausch believed everyone has a choice in life to be like one of two Winnie-the-Pooh characters: you can be like fun-loving, exuberant Tigger or like gloomy Eeyore. Throughout his life, Pausch looked for the fun in everything—he didn’t see any benefit to being a sad Eeyore. After his cancer diagnosis, his Tigger persona helped him live his last days to the fullest.
Take the risk: When you’ve failed, you’ve learned something about how to succeed in the future. In fact, failing is such an integral part of success that Pausch liked to give an award for the most spectacular failure to student teams who took big creative risks and failed. He dubbed it the “First Penguin Award”—the name comes from the way one penguin in a flock always jumps into the water ahead of the others, taking the biggest risk of being eaten by predators.
Work hard: Although people often want to avoid work, there’s no benefit to taking a shortcut. The more you work, the more you learn about your subject or pursuit and the bigger the eventual reward. Work is like interest on your savings—it compounds. When Pausch received tenure earlier than is typical, colleagues wanted to know how he’d done it. In reply, he invited them to call him at 10 p.m. at his office on any Friday night—in other words, he worked hard for it.
Show gratitude: When people give you their time and attention, write them a thank-you note. You’ll stand out because thank-you notes are rare, which may benefit you in the future. But more importantly, showing gratitude is a sign of character. If you can’t adequately pay someone back for a kindness, pay it forward. Pausch made a point of showing gratitude in both large and small ways. For instance, he sent cookies to colleagues who reviewed journal articles for him. Also, after receiving tenure, Pausch thanked his research team for their contribution to his success by taking them on a week-long trip to Disney World.
Be both optimistic and realistic: Well-meaning friends sometimes tell cancer patients to be optimistic or their treatments will fail. As a result, when they have setbacks or bad days, patients feel guilty for not being positive enough. However, optimism must be coupled with realism. Pausch believed he could be realistic about his condition, but also be optimistic that he could do things to improve how he felt and continue to find joy in daily life.
Pausch felt it was important not to impose his own dreams on his children, but to let them discover their own paths. As a professor, he’d counseled many students who had chosen majors that pleased their parents and ended up being miserable. His message was: be what you want to be. Pursue your own dreams and do what brings you joy, regardless of anyone’s expectations.
Achieving your dreams, he said, isn’t so much about chasing them as about living your life in the right way. If you do that, “your dreams will come to you.”
Randy Pausch died on July 25, 2008, at age 47.
When computer science professor Randy Pausch was invited to deliver a “Last Lecture” at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh in September 2007, he’d been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. The Last Lecture was a Carnegie Mellon speaker series in which professors were invited to present their philosophy of life, imagining the lecture was their last chance to share personal and professional life lessons.
In Pausch’s case, it really was a last chance to impart life lessons—he’d been given just months to live. But more importantly, he viewed the lecture as his legacy for his three young children, who would grow up without him there to guide them.
Pausch’s lecture, titled “Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams,” quickly went viral and was viewed by millions around the world (https://www.cmu.edu/randyslecture/). With the help of Wall Street Journal reporter Jeffrey Zaslow, he expanded it into a best-selling book, The Last Lecture, before he died 11 months later.
Pausch begins his book by characterizing his terminal illness dispassionately, as “an engineering problem” to be described, analyzed, and tackled. But an emotional undercurrent also runs through the book—his desire to leave his wife and children with an abiding sense of his love for them, and his love of life, after he’s gone.
Like an engineer, he clearly describes his problem—10 tumors in his liver—then moves on to his “solution”—to use every moment he has left as productively as possible. He has too little time to waste any of it feeling sorry for himself. He has no choice but to play the cards he’s been dealt.
Pausch’s plan is to spend every possible moment with his family, to help smooth their transition to a life without him, and to encapsulate in his Last Lecture the joy of life and his appreciation of it. He describes it as trying to put himself into a bottle that would wash up on the beach years later for his children, then aged 5, 2, and 1.
A videotaped lecture can’t replace 20 years of parenting. But the purpose of engineering isn’t to find a perfect solution—it’s to do your best with the limited resources you have, and that’s what Pausch resolves to do.
(Shortform note: This summary combines the introductory and biographical information in Parts 1 and 2 of the book. Parts 3-6 focus on the content of Pausch’s lecture plus similar material that was added in his book.)
When Pausch is invited to give a “Last Lecture,” the series has been renamed “Journeys,” and speakers are to talk about their “personal and professional journeys.” When he accepts the invitation months in advance, he’s optimistic about his prognosis. However, when it comes time to provide the title and an abstract, he wonders whether working on a lecture is the best use of the time he has left.
His wife, Jai (pronounced Jay), wants him to spend his time with the family rather than on preparing a lecture. Plus, he’ll have to travel to Pittsburgh from the family’s new home in Virginia the day before the lecture, which is Jai’s birthday—the last she’ll be able to celebrate with her husband.
But the idea of the lecture lingers as something he could leave his children, a way to say goodbye to his university colleagues, and a chance to cement his legacy and do a last bit of good. He tells Jai, “An injured lion still wants to roar.”
They decide to go ahead with it. The talk will be about living rather than dying and will focus on an aspect of his life that he feels makes him unique—he’s managed to fulfill every one of his seemingly outlandish childhood dreams. He wants the lecture to encourage others to pursue their dreams. Hence the title, “Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams.”
He puts together over 300 images, including many photos from his childhood, to help tell his story and continues editing them up to the last minute.
Pausch’s lecture draws a capacity crowd. He starts by displaying images of CT scans showing his tumors, and a photo of his new home in Virginia, where his family has moved so his wife and children can be near her friends and family after he dies. He does several pushups on stage to demonstrate the irony of looking good outwardly while his cancer rages internally. With the “backstory” of his terminal illness out of the way, he proceeds to talk about living.
Pausch and his older sister grew up in a middle-class community in Columbia, Maryland (suburban Baltimore), the children of an English teacher and an auto insurance salesman. He credited his positive childhood for the fact that he went on to achieve his dreams and live a fulfilling life.
His parents taught him old-school values of humility, hard work, initiative, the joy of learning, and meeting high expectations. They were extremely frugal—the family rarely went out for dinner or movies. Instead, they urged their children to read books. The children frequently consulted the dictionary during dinner when a question came up in a discussion. Whenever he wanted to know something, Pausch’s parents told him to look it up in the dictionary or encyclopedia.
His father liked to tell stories, especially with a moral. Pausch credits his father for much of the wisdom he quotes in his Last Lecture. His father had been a medic in World War II, serving in the Battle of the Bulge.
Pausch was naturally cocky, but his mother kept him humble thoughout his life. She was sparing with her praise, once describing him to a friend as “alert, but not terribly precocious.” Later in life, when he complained about a difficult test he had to take as a Ph.D. student, she reminded him that his father had been fighting the Germans at that age. After he got his Ph.D., she liked to introduce him as a doctor, “but not the kind who helps people.”
His parents were also service-minded. His father founded a nonprofit group to help immigrant children learn English. Another project was funding a girls’ dormitory in Thailand, intended to keep them in school and out of prostitution.
Even his father’s job of selling auto insurance in inner-city Baltimore was geared toward helping others—he helped poor people with bad credit to get the vehicles they needed to survive. He was a huge advocate for social equality. At age 83, when Pausch’s father was diagnosed with leukemia, he arranged to donate his body to science and to fund the Thailand dormitory for six years after his death.
One of the biggest ways Pausch’s parents impacted him was by encouraging his imagination. For example, they allowed Pausch and his sister to paint his childhood room. Among other things, he painted a quadratic equation, an elevator (the house actually had just one floor), a periscope, a Pandora’s box, a rocket ship, and chess pieces. On the ceiling, he wrote, “I’m trapped in the attic,” backward so it looked as though it had been written by someone imprisoned upstairs. He also wrote on the wall, “Disco sucks” (it was the ‘70s), but his mother painted over the last word.
His parents kept the room as he’d painted it, long after he moved out. Visiting it later reminded Pausch of how special his parents were for recognizing and encouraging his creativity.
Carnegie Mellon University and others have a tradition of inviting professors to present a “Last Lecture,” as though it were their last chance to share personal and professional life lessons.
If you were invited to give a “Last Lecture,” what would your title be? What sentence or phrase sums up your life so far?
Think of a memorable life lesson you could include in your “last lecture.” Was it a success or failure? What was it?
If you knew you had only a few months to live, what would your No. 1 priority be and why?
Always an imaginative child, Pausch had six dreams: Winning the biggest stuffed animals at the carnival, playing in the NFL, writing an entry in the World Book Encyclopedia, being Captain Kirk of Star Trek, experiencing zero gravity, and becoming a designer or “Imagineer” at Disney. In various ways, he achieved them all.
When Pausch was a child, he and his father took pride in winning giant stuffed animals at carnivals and amusement parks. Carrying around a giant stuffed animal won in a game of skill, such as shooting at cutouts of ducks or tossing rings at bottles, always drew admiring looks.
There were only two requirements for becoming the envy of the carnival: a pocket full of change and a long reach, which helped during the ring toss (you could lean toward the target and throw). Pausch says he never cheated, although he amassed so many stuffed animals and posed in so many photos with them that others sometimes doubted he’d won them all.
He displayed some of them at his Last Lecture and invited audience members to take them afterward—he didn’t want his wife to have to deal with the clutter of oversize stuffed animals after he died. After the lecture, he learned that a female student with cancer had taken one of them, an elephant. Pausch found it appropriate because cancer was so often the proverbial elephant in the room.
As a nine-year-old, Pausch wanted to be an NFL football player. While he didn’t play professionally, he said he learned more from not achieving that dream than from some other dreams he did achieve.
Three important lessons he learned from playing in a youth league coached by a former Penn State linebacker were:
Although Pausch thought he was learning football, he was learning how to live.
(Shortform note: During a TV special on Pausch after the Last Lecture, reporter Diane Sawyer arranged for him to visit a Pittsburgh Steelers’ practice and catch a few passes from players. He also kicked a successful field goal in one try. View the special at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-a7LRwqwNw)
Pausch loved the World Book Encyclopedia and pored over it as a child. Buying it, along with regular updates, was a great expense for his parents, but to him, it was a “gift of knowledge.” He always wondered about the experts who wrote the entries, particularly the obscure ones in Volume Z; his dream was to be invited to write an entry.
Years later, as a Carnegie Mellon professor, he was invited to write a section on virtual reality, which he did. Although Wikipedia and other online information sources have largely replaced traditional encyclopedias, Pausch enjoyed occasionally taking his kids to a library and showing them his entry.
As a boy with an interest in science, Pausch loved the TV show Star Trek and its hero, Captain Kirk, as well as the show’s space-age gadgets, including pocket communications devices much like today’s smartphones. Later in life, he applied leadership lessons he’d learned from the Captain Kirk character—for instance, remaining cool under pressure, setting the tone, having a vision, inspiring the troops, and delegating.
Pausch never played or became Captain Kirk, but he met his idol when actor William Shatner, the original Captain Kirk, visited his virtual reality lab at Carnegie Mellon. Shatner wanted to learn about the latest technology for a book he was co-authoring about Star Trek devices that foreshadowed real technological advances. For the visit, Pausch and his students built a virtual reality replica of the bridge of the starship Enterprise.
During his cancer treatment, Pausch remembered a line from the Star Trek movie The Wrath of Khan, in which Kirk commented that he didn’t believe in “the no-win scenario.” Later, Shatner sent him a signed photo of Captain Kirk inscribed with that line when he learned of Pausch’s diagnosis.
Astronauts were popular heroes when Pausch was growing up in the 1960s and 1970s. While many boys aspired to be astronauts, Pausch ruled that out because he’d heard that NASA only accepted applicants with perfect eyesight (he wore glasses). However, what interested him even more was the thought of being weightless.
Later, he learned that NASA had a rocket simulator nicknamed the “vomit comet,” in which visitors get to experience 20 seconds of something very similar to zero gravity. College students could apply to conduct experiments in the simulator. So Pausch’s students at Carnegie Mellon submitted a virtual reality experiment and it was approved. The catch was that NASA didn’t allow teachers to go onboard with their students. But Pausch didn’t give up—he studied the rules and learned that local journalists could accompany students, so he filled out a form identifying himself as a media representative. This was technically accurate because, after the visit, he shared video and a report with journalists.
Pausch made a memorable childhood trip to Disneyland in 1969 when he was eight. As his interest in science and engineering developed, he dreamed of designing Disney rides and attractions.
Years later, after receiving a sabbatical for virtual reality research, he talked Disney into accepting him for six months to work on a secret Aladdin attraction involving a magic carpet ride. He had some trouble getting a Carnegie Mellon dean to approve such an unconventional study request, but he persisted and his experience as an “Imagineer” was a highlight of his life. He wore his Disney Imagineer’s shirt when he delivered his Last Lecture.
Randy Pausch achieved his childhood dreams, partly by staying in touch with them and continuing to nurture his imagination.
Describe your most memorable childhood dream or aspiration. How old were you when you had it? What did you do with it?
As an adult, did you achieve it or some version of it? How?
Think of a child in your life. How can you encourage his or her dream?
In summer 2006, Pausch experienced pain in his upper abdomen, followed by jaundice. He at first thought he had hepatitis, but CT scans showed a tumor on his pancreas. Of all cancers, pancreatic cancer is the most deadly; half of those who get it die within six months of diagnosis and 96% die within five years.
Pausch approached his treatment like a scientist, asking questions and seeking data. His goal was to live as long as possible for his family and to that end, he was willing to endure any potentially effective treatment, no matter how miserable it made him. He underwent a complicated surgery called a “Whipple” procedure, which removed his gallbladder and part of his pancreas, stomach, and small intestine. This was followed by chemotherapy and radiation. He lost 44 pounds from the brutal regimen, but scans in January showed no additional signs of cancer.
However, tests seven months later in August 2007 showed that the cancer had metastasized to his liver. Pausch and his wife learned the bad news from looking at his charts on the doctor’s computer while waiting for his appointment. The next step was palliative treatment (more chemo) to ease his symptoms to improve his quality of life and possibly extend his life by a few months.
When Pausch asked how long he had to live, the doctor said he probably had three to six months of good health. The positive spin reminded Pausch of the way Disney employees are taught to respond when people ask when the park closes: “The park is open until 8 p.m.”
The day before the checkup, Pausch had told his wife Jai that regardless of the test results, for the moment, it felt great to be alive and be with her. That’s how he decided to live the rest of his life—focusing on the moment.
Sometime later, a Carnegie Mellon colleague told him she’d seen a man driving a convertible while listening to music. His arm hung out the window, he was tapping the song’s rhythm on the side of the car, and he had a smile on his face. She was surprised to realize it was Pausch, so obviously living in the moment.
Besides the hard lessons of his diagnosis, Pausch used his Last Lecture to recount other lessons he had learned or taught throughout his life:
Pausch could be arrogant and tactless, but on two memorable occasions, others put him in his place. The first was his sister Tammy, when he was seven and she was nine. As they waited at the school bus stop one morning, he was being bossy and obnoxious, so she tossed his lunch box into a puddle just as the bus came. She was sent to the principal’s office, and the principal decided to let their mother handle it. She, in turn, deferred to their father. Their dad listened to the story with a smile and all but congratulated Tammy for putting her brother in his place.
Later, a faculty member and mentor at Brown University, where Pausch was an undergraduate, told him it was a shame that people found him arrogant because it would hold him back in the future; Pausch concluded that he’d just been tactfully told he was a jerk.
He came to appreciate those in his life who gave him honest feedback and he tried to do the same for his students.
Before he was married, Pausch enjoyed being an uncle to his sister’s two children. He took the role seriously, trying to teach them life lessons and new ways of thinking. He had two rules for their outings: don’t whine and don’t tell mom what they’d done with their uncle.
Once, when the kids were seven and nine, he picked them up in his new convertible. As they climbed in, their mother warned them not to get it dirty. Hearing this, Pausch calmly opened a can of soda and poured it onto the cloth-covered back seats. His message was that a car is just a possession—and people are more important than things. Later that weekend, when his nephew got the flu and threw up on the car seat, Pausch was glad he’d delivered that message.
After he got married, he passed the same message along to Jai. She’d backed out of their garage in their minivan and struck his convertible. She put both vehicles in the garage, cooked his favorite meal, and with trepidation, told him what had happened. She explained that both vehicles still ran but that the convertible had the most damage.
First, Pausch said, let’s finish dinner. Later, as they looked at the vehicles, Jai said she’d get repair estimates in the morning. Pausch replied that since the vehicles still worked, there wasn’t any need to fix the dents. They were just things, with a utilitarian purpose, like garbage cans and wheelbarrows—you don’t fix those when they get dented. In life and marriage, not everything needs to be fixed. Sometimes it’s better to let small things go.
After his father died in 2006, Pausch began looking through his father’s papers. He found photos of his father as a young man playing an accordion, wearing a Santa suit, and holding a giant stuffed animal. Among the documents relating to his charity work and his business was a 1945 Army citation from the commanding general of the 75th Infantry Division for heroism.
When his infantry company was attacked by German forces, eight men were wounded, and Pausch’s father, a 22-year-old medic, braved enemy fire to treat the men, all of whom were later evacuated. Though he received the Bronze Star for valor, he never mentioned it to his son.
For Pausch, it was yet another lesson from his father, this time weeks after his death, about sacrifice and humility.
On New Year’s Eve as Pausch and his seven-months-pregnant wife were about to ring in 2002, she began hemorrhaging and they rushed to the hospital. Her placenta had torn away from the uterine wall, endangering the baby, and she was going into clinical shock. They were both terrified, but the anesthesiologist took Pausch aside and told him to do everything possible to keep Jai calm as they performed a caesarian section.
Pausch managed to do so by reassuring her and calmly describing everything that was happening. Their son Dylan weighed just two pounds, fifteen ounces, but was able to breathe on his own and cry. The lesson was that even when the situation is dire, there are always things you can do to make it better.
Pausch had learned to overcome obstacles in his academic career—for instance, talking his way into a temporary job with Disney. He’d come to believe and told his students that when you run into brick walls, they’re an opportunity for you to demonstrate how badly you want something.
But at age 37, he encountered one of his most formidable challenges—winning over the woman who eventually became his wife. He met Jai at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, when he was invited to give a lecture. She was a graduate student in comparative literature but was also working part-time hosting visitors to the computer science labs. She’d once heard him speak and was intrigued, so she researched his background when she learned he’d be visiting UNC. Pausch was smitten with her and they went out a few times during his visit. When he returned to Pittsburgh, he asked her to visit him. She refused, not wanting a long-distance relationship, but he persisted and they began seeing each other regularly.
But when Pausch asked her to move to Pittsburgh and live with him, Jai refused. However, she agreed to move and live in her own apartment. When he went to UNC to help her pack, she changed her mind, saying she didn’t love him. Pausch was distraught and called his parents for advice; they told him to be supportive and give her time. She eventually realized she loved him after all, and moved to Pittsburgh. He’d shown how badly he wanted the relationship by not letting the brick wall of her refusals stop him.
Their marriage began memorably—the ceremony took place at a Victorian mansion and they departed in a hot air balloon. But the balloon went off course and had to crash-land in a field, close to an oncoming train. Fortunately, no one was hurt. They survived the scare, although a more formidable one, Pausch’s cancer diagnosis, came later.
Like all couples, they had to learn to communicate, which was an ongoing process. By the time Pausch was diagnosed with cancer eight years into their marriage, Jai had learned to be honest and direct. Because he was a scientist, she also gave him data. For instance, after his diagnosis, he wanted to visit his side of the family for Christmas, but they had the flu, and Jai didn’t want him or their children to risk exposure. So she sought input from two neighbors who were doctors—they advised against exposing the kids but said Pausch could go. When Jai presented him with this form of “data,” Pausch agreed to make a quick visit by himself.
After his diagnosis, Jai also learned to let go of small frustrations, such as Pausch’s habit of not putting things away and leaving his clothes strewn around. She kept a journal in which she recorded her frustrations, rather than arguing or letting them detract from their remaining time together. They tried to focus on living each moment.
New Year’s Eve was particularly emotional. Pausch took his son Dylan to the movie, Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium, which was about a toymaker. When it was revealed that the title character was dying, Dylan sat on his father’s lap and cried, although he didn’t know his father was dying too. A poignant line from the movie stuck with Pausch. When an apprentice tells Mr. Magorium that he can’t die but has to live, he responds that he’s already done his living.
Pausch and his wife reviewed the positives of the past year: vacations together and time spent with their children. Pausch resolved to start picking up his possessions when he saw her writing in her journal.
Pausch liked to tell his students that when you run into brick walls, they’re an opportunity for you to demonstrate how badly you want something.
Think of a time when something threatened to prevent you from getting what you wanted. What did you want and what was the obstacle?
What was your first reaction? Did you question whether you really wanted it or start thinking of ways around the obstacle? What did you end up doing?
What’s another brick wall you currently face? What action will you take and why?
As a professor, Pausch viewed his role as not just teaching his subject—computer science—but also teaching them how to succeed in life. The rest of the book presents his favorite principles and tips, including those highlighted in his Last Lecture plus some additional tips.
Even before he got cancer, Pausch believed strongly in managing time well and emphasized this to his students. His key principles were:
Pausch’s diagnosis reinforced his belief that time is a precious asset. Cancer also taught him that time is finite and you may not have as much as you think. Once, when he bought groceries, the self-checkout computer charged him twice for his $16 order. He realized that correcting this mistake would have required finding the manager, filling out a form, and getting the charge on his credit voided—a process taking at least 15 minutes. He decided he’d rather have the 15 minutes than the $16.
From playing youth football, Pausch learned the importance of accurately judging your abilities and flaws. You can’t improve if you don’t have a realistic picture of yourself. So, as a professor, Pausch incorporated peer feedback into his class projects.
He collected feedback from students on their teammates, then created bar charts for each student, showing graphically whether her peers thought she was working hard, whether she was creative, whether others thought she was a team player, and how easy they thought she was to work with. Students could see not only how they ranked individually but also compared to everyone else in the class. In addition, Pausch shared classmates’ suggestions for improvement with each student.
For most students, the assessments were an eye-opener and they responded with improvement.
While at Carnegie Mellon, Pausch launched several ambitious projects where he gave students free rein and they performed far beyond expectations. He thought of these projects as ways of fueling students’ imaginations and enabling them to pursue and realize their dreams.
Walt Disney’s dream was that Disney World never be finished but that it evolve continually. Pausch viewed the Alice software the same way, as an ever-evolving tool for realizing dreams.
Pausch believed everyone has a choice in life to be like one of two Winnie-the-Pooh characters: you can be like fun-loving, exuberant Tigger or like gloomy Eeyore.
Throughout his life, Pausch was a Tigger, looking for the fun in everything. Even having cancer didn’t turn him into an Eeyore—he made a point of having fun each day he had left. For instance, for his last Halloween, he and his family dressed like the Disney superheroes, the Incredibles. He posted a photo on his website, with a caption noting that chemotherapy hadn’t affected his superpowers, which was a reference to the costume’s exaggerated muscles.
He took a scuba-diving trip with three old friends (all Tiggers), and despite an awareness that it was their last time together, they focused on the moment, joking and making fun of each other. The others poked fun at Pausch for the “St. Randy of Pittsburgh” reputation he had acquired after giving his Last Lecture.
Pausch vowed to hold onto his Tigger persona to the end, saying there wasn’t any “upside” to being a sad Eeyore.
Here’s more of Pausch’s advice for how to live, based on how he tried to live his life.
Dream big: When men walked on the moon in 1969, Pausch was at summer camp and missed seeing the historic landing of the lunar module on television. He was disappointed to have missed it, but thrilled that his father had taken a photo for him from the family’s television set at home. For Pausch, the photo was a message that anything is possible and an inspiration to dream big.
Be earnest: Being earnest is more important than being hip. Being hip means focusing on short-term gratification, while being earnest is about working to accomplish something that lasts. An Eagle Scout is an example of earnestness paying off. It takes perseverance to achieve the rank, and the values it reflects stick with you and impress others well into adulthood.
Don’t resist mom: Don’t bother resisting your mom—she’ll win every time. For instance, no matter how often Pausch asked his mother to stop calling him “Randolph,” it did no good. Finally, he gave up debating with her and decided to appreciate her more instead.
Don’t complain: Complaining doesn’t advance your goals or make you happier. When you run into challenges, work harder rather than complaining. Jackie Robinson, the first African-American to play Major League baseball, knew he had to work harder than white players and, despite harassment from fans, that’s what he did.
Learn to work together: The ability to work effectively with others is essential in the workplace and in family life. Here are Pausch’s tips for his students: Properly introduce yourself, have a comfortable meeting spot, allow everyone to speak (don’t interrupt or finish others’ sentences), don’t be egotistical about claiming credit, praise each other, and ask questions rather than making assertions.
See the best in everyone: Almost everyone has a good side. When you feel frustrated with someone, it may mean you haven’t given them enough time to show you their good side. Be patient.
Pay attention to actions, not words: A female colleague told Pausch that in relationships with men, she’d learned to pay attention to what they did rather than to what they said—which is good advice for most interactions.
Don’t shun cliches: Cliches are valuable because they say something useful in a memorable way. Many younger people don’t know the older cliches, so don’t be afraid to quote them. Some of Pausch’s favorites were:
Take the risk: When you’ve failed, you’ve learned something about how to succeed in the future. In fact, failing is such an integral part of success that Pausch liked to give an award for the most spectacular failure to student teams who took big creative risks and failed. He dubbed it the “First Penguin Award”—the name comes from the way one penguin in a flock always jumps into the water ahead of the others, taking the biggest risk of being eaten by predators.
Show gratitude: When people give you their time and attention, write them a thank-you note. You’ll stand out because thank-you notes are rare, which may benefit you in the future. But more importantly, showing gratitude is a sign of character. If you can’t adequately pay someone back for a kindness, pay it forward. Pausch made a point of showing gratitude in both large and small ways. For instance, he sent cookies to colleagues who reviewed journal articles for him. Also, after receiving tenure, Pausch thanked his research team for their contribution to his success by taking them on a week-long trip to Disney World.
Work hard: Although people often want to avoid work, there’s no benefit to taking a shortcut. The more you work, the more you learn about your subject or pursuit and the bigger the eventual reward. Work is like interest on your savings—it compounds. When Paush received tenure earlier than is typical, colleagues wanted to know how he’d done it. In reply, he invited them to call him at 10 p.m. at his office on any Friday night—in other words, he worked hard for it.
Be prepared: Planning goes a long way. Think about everything that can go wrong—especially the worst-case scenario—and have a contingency plan. Then you can be an optimist and not worry about potential problems because you’ve prepared for them. For instance, Pausch cited a classmate who had brought along an extra light bulb for a presentation using a projector. Sure enough, the projector’s light went out, but because the student was prepared, he was able to quickly replace it and carry on, rather than cutting the presentation short.
Apologize sincerely: A half-hearted apology is worse than none at all. A sincere apology consists of these steps: 1) state what you did wrong, 2) express remorse for hurting someone, and 3) ask how you can make amends. This was Pausch’s advice to his students when friction developed during team projects—for instance, when some students didn’t pull their weight. Sincere apologies smoothed things out and allowed the teams to complete their work successfully.
Be truthful: People often lie to avoid expending effort and they usually think they got away with it. But most often, they didn’t. The people you lie to always remember it and tell others. To quote a cliche, you’re only as good as your word.
Stay in touch with your childhood dreams: Carry a Crayon with you, and take it out when you need inspiration—the smell and feel will remind you of your childhood dreams and the thrill and potential of unbounded creativity.
Don’t look down on menial work: Don’t look down on menial work or on starting at the bottom. If you don’t take menial work seriously and do it well, why should anyone trust you to do more? Pausch learned that lesson as a boy while working with day laborers to hoe strawberries. Several coworkers were teachers, making extra money while school was out, and Pausch commented to his father that the work was beneath them. His father shot back that he’d rather his son be the best ditch digger he could be than a self-important elitist.
Serve the common good: Like it or not, you’re part of a community—in exchange for the benefits of being in a group, you have a responsibility to give back. If you don’t contribute, you’re selfish and undermining the benefits you enjoy. An example of not giving back is supporting the constitutional right to a jury trial, but trying to get out of performing jury duty.
Be both optimistic and realistic: Well-meaning friends sometimes tell cancer patients to be optimistic or their treatments will fail. As a result, when they have setbacks or bad days, patients feel guilty for not being positive enough. However, optimism must be coupled with realism. Pausch believed he could be realistic about his condition, but also be optimistic that he could do things to improve how he felt and continue to find joy in daily life.
Pausch urged his audience to choose which Winnie the Pooh character they wanted to be—the exuberant Tigger or gloomy Eeyore.
Are you mostly a Tigger or an Eeyore? Why do you say that?
How has a Tigger or Eeyore outlook affected your life? Give an example.
Think of a situation in your life that you approached with an Eeyore-like attitude. How would approaching it as a Tigger have been different?
The thought of his children growing up without him was one of the most difficult for Pausch to bear. Because they were too young for deep conversations about life and death, he simply tried to create memories that would later remind them of his love for them.
Besides spending as much time as possible with them, he created adventures for each child—for instance, he and Dylan went swimming with dolphins. In addition to creating a photo and video record of their times together, Pausch wrote out lists of what he loved about each child. He made videos telling each child what they meant to him.
He admired his son Dylan for being loving and empathetic in trying to comfort other children when they were hurt. He also liked Dylan’s analytical bent, curiosity, and his habit of noticing things and asking detailed questions. Pausch cited his son Logan’s physicality, energy, and gregariousness. He saw Logan as “the ultimate Tigger,” willing to try anything and easily making friends with whomever he met. Though his daughter Chloe was still a baby, Pausch delighted in how different she was from her brothers, for instance, how careful and delicate.
It was important to Pausch not to impose his own dreams on his children, but to let them discover their own paths. As a professor, he’d counseled many students who had chosen majors that pleased their parents and ended up being miserable. His message to his children was: be what you want to be. Pursue your own dreams and do what brings you joy, regardless of anyone’s expectations. His hope was that they’d feel his presence with them on whatever path they chose.
Pausch and his wife spent time talking about what her life would be like after he died. He was grateful that his illness, unlike sudden death from a car accident, allowed him time to have those conversations. He urged her to take time for herself, to accept mistakes and forgive herself, to find role models for the children, and to do what makes her happy.
To wrap up his Last Lecture, Pausch had put his final points on slides in case he became too emotional to speak them. Yet when the time comes to conclude his talk, he feels at peace for having finally said what he most urgently needed to say. In effect, he’d let it all out.
Hiis closing remarks are a summation of his life. Achieving your dreams, he says, isn’t so much about chasing them as about living your life properly. If you do that, “your dreams will come to you.”
He ends with a slide picturing his family, and acknowledges that his talk hadn’t been only for those in the audience, but for his children.
Randy Pausch died on July 25, 2008, at age 47.