I also knew why my closing lines would be so emotional for me. It was because the end of the talk had to be a distillation of how I felt about the end of my life.
As I wound down, I had taken a minute to review some of the key points of the lecture. And then I offered a summation, but with a twist; a surprise ending, if you will.
“So today’s talk was about achieving childhood dreams,” I said. “But did you figure out the head fake?”
I paused. The room was quiet.
“It’s not about how to achieve your dreams. It’s about how to lead your life. If you lead your life the right way, the karma will take care of itself. The dreams will come to you.”
I clicked to the next slide, and a question filled the large screen: “Have you figured out the second head fake?”
I took a breath. I decided to speak at a slightly faster clip than I had before. Maybe if I just talked faster, I thought, I could get through it. I repeated the words on screen.
“Have you figured out the second head fake?”
Then I told them: The talk wasn’t just for those in the room. “It was for my kids.”
I clicked to the very last slide, a photo of me standing by our swing set, holding a smiling Logan with my right arm and sweet Chloe with my left, Dylan sitting happily on my shoulders.
Acknowledgments
M Y GREAT thanks to Bob Miller, David Black, and Gary Morris. I wish to especially thank our editor, Will Balliett, for his great kindness and integrity throughout, and Jeffrey Zaslow, for his incredible talent and professionalism.
The full set of people I must thank will not fit on this page. Fortunately, web pages scroll: please visit www.thelastlecture.com for a full list of acknowledgments and attributions. Video of my “last lecture” can also be viewed from that site.
My life will be lost to pancreatic cancer. Two organizations I have worked with that are dedicated to fighting this disease are:
The Pancreatic Cancer Action Network
www.pancan.org
The Lustgarten Foundation
www.lustgarten.org
About the Authors
Randy Pausch is 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 is an award-winning teacher and researcher, and has 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 lives in Virginia with his wife and three children.
Jeffrey Zaslow, a columnist for the Wall Street Journal, attended the Last Lecture, and wrote the story that helped fuel worldwide interest in it. He lives in suburban Detroit with his wife, Sherry, and daughters Jordan, Alex, and Eden.
Credits
By Randy Pausch, Professor, Carnegie Mellon with Jeffrey Zaslow.
Copyright
THE LAST LECTURE. Copyright © 2008 by Randy Pausch. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of Hyperion-books.
Microsoft Reader March 2008 ISBN 978-1-4013-9159-1
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