Lisa's Story, College Edition

From the October 12th Chronicle of Higher Education:

Randy Pausch didn't want his last lecture to be about dying. He is dying of pancreatic cancer, and he knows it is a painful way to go. But when he walked up to the podium last month to address more than 450 colleagues, students, and friends at Carnegie Mellon University, he intended to demonstrate that his focus is on living. So he did a couple of one-handed push-ups, sprinkled his remarks with jokes, donned props including a Mad Hatter hat, and generally showed that one way to cheat death is to laugh in its face.

Mr. Pausch, a 46-year-old professor of computer science and co-founder of the university's Entertainment Technology Center, agreed to give the talk in part so that his three young children, ages 5, 2, and 1, could one day hear his message on "Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams."

Sure, he could have delivered the advice in front of a video camera at home — and he thought about taking that route — but he felt that an audience would lend his message greater weight.

"A couple of hundred people in a room, looking and listening and laughing and applauding — hopefully at the appropriate times — that gives a lot of validation to my kids that a lot of people believe in this, and a lot of people who knew me believe that I did my best to try to live this way," he said in an interview last week.

You can listen to the last lecture by going to Dr. Pausch's university website, where you can see the streaming video or get one giant download.

I just watched it, and it's worth the time. Alternately moving and funny, it's a great gift for him to leave his kids. God bless and good luck, Dr. Pausch.