The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch

The Last Lecture  on Oprah Winfrey Show

So I'm  reprising a talk that I gave in september at Carnegy Mellon University.
There's an academic tradition called the "last lecture."
Hypothetially, if you knew you are gonna die, you had one last lecture,
what would you say to your students.
Well, for me there's an elephant in the room.
And the elephant in the room is that for me it wasn't hypothetical.
I'v been fighting pancreatic cancer. It is now com back after surgery,chemotheraphy, radiation.
And the doctors tell me there's nothing more to do and I have months to live.
These are my most recent CT scans. The pancreatic cancers are spreaded  to my liver
and there's approximately a dozen tumors.
I don't like this
I have three little kids .
Let's be clear.
This stinks.
But I can't do anything about the face that I'm gonna die I'm pursuing medical treatments.
But I pretty much know about this movie's going to end.
And I can't control the cards aren't dealt, just how I play the hands.

 

Now if I'm not morose enough for you I'm sorry to disappoint.
But I don't choose to be an object of pity.
And in fact, although I'm gonna die soon, I'm actually physically very strong.
In fact I'm probably physically stronger than most of the people in this audience.
So today's talk is not about death, it's about life and how to live.
Specifically about childhood dreams and about how you can try to achieve them.
My childhood dreams, your childhood dreams.
As a child I had an incredibly happy childood.
I went back in lated photo album and I couldn't find any places where I wasn't smiling.
All right, I just had a great childhood and I was dreaming, always dreaming.
It was an easy time to dream.
When you turn on your television set, and men are landing on the moon,
anything is possible and we should never lose that spirit.
So what were my childhood dreams?
Playing in the National Football League.
This is one of my childhood dreams I didn't achieve.
Right, and it's very important to know that,
if you don't achieve your dreams, you can still get a lot by trying for it.
There's an expression that I loved, experience is what you get when you don't get what you wanted.

 

I played in a little league for a long time, and I have a phenomenal coach, coach Jim Graham.
And he was old school and when I was into practice, he rode me all practice.
You know, you're doing it wrong, you're doing this wrong, go back and do it again, you slacking off,
you owe me, push-ups just for two hours.
He was relentless, and after practice, one of the assistant coaches came up to me and he said, yeah,
coach Graham rode you pretty hard, and I said , yeah.
He said, that's a good thing.
Because it means he cares, when you doing a bad job and nobody points out to you that's when they've given up on you.
And a lesson that's really stuck with me is when somebody is going to ride you for two hours they are doing that
bcause they care to make you better.

 

So next dream, Walt Disney imagineering.
When I was age 8, my family took the pilgrimage to Disneyland in California and it was this incredible experience.
The rides and shows and attractions everything.
And I said, "Gosh, I'd like to make stuff like that when I get older".
So I graduated from college, and I tried to become a imagineer this is the people who make the magic.
And I got a lovely rejection letter and I tried again after graduate school and I have to kept all of these rejection lettes over the years.
They are very inspirational, but then the darned this thing happened.
You know, I've work hard and work hard, and I became a junior faculty member and I specialzed in doing in certain kinds of research.
That's me, and I developed skills that was valuable to Disney and I got a chance to go there.
And I was a part of imagineering team and we worked on something called the Aladdin's magic carpet ride and it was incredibly cool.
However, it took me over 15 years to do it and lots and lots of tries.
What I learned from that is that, the brick walls that are in our way, are there for a reason.
They are not there to keep us out.
They are there to give us a way to show how much we want it.

 

To get a childhood dreams, I recommend you have good parents.
I lucked out, I have great parents.
Ah, this is my mother on her 70th birthday, I'm the blue in the back, I have just been lapped.
And this is my father on his 80th birthday.
There is this notion of have fun all the time, have sense of fun and wonder.
That shouldn't never go away, all right.
My dad, what an incredible guy.
He fought in World War 2 and he was cleary part of the greatest generation.
Sadly, my dad passed away a little over a year ago.
And when my mother was going through his things, that was when she discovered in World War 2,
he was awarded the Bronze Star for Valor.
In 50 years of marriage it had just never come up.
It's a real lesson in humility that I can learn from my father though.
Now my mother, mothers are people who love you even when you pull their hair
and this was the kind of relationship I had with my mother. 
And my mother speaking of humility, she was always there to keep me and check.

 

But I was going through graduate school I was taking really hard examinations.
I was home pretty much complaining about how hard this Ph.D. test were.
And she just patted my arm and she said we know how you feel, just remember when your father was your age
he was fighting the German in World War 2.
And when the day came when I got my Ph.D. and I was so proud and my mother introduced me to everyone as,
"This is my son, he's a doctor but not the kind that helps people".
Probably though, the most wonderful thing my parents did was they let me painting in my bedroom.
I said one day, " I want to paint stuffs on the walls" and they said, "okay"
So I had a rocket ship and we lived on a ranch so I wanted an elevator, I wasn't sure where it would go.
And ah, you can tell the nerds early, so that's the quadatic equation.
And the great thing is that they let me do it and they felt that letting me express my creativity is
more important pristine nature of the walls.
And I was really blessed to have parents who saw it that way.
My parents taught me about the importance of people versus things.

 

So when I get older, I bought my first car and I was so excited I had this shiny convertible.
This is my niece and  nephew, Christopher and Laura.
Every month I'd taken them for a weekend and my sister and her husband could get some little break.
And we go off on adventures and just I shown up with my new car and my sister explained to Chis and Laura.
That's Uncle Randy's new car you can't get it dirty... dela dela...
And they are just cracking and laughing, because over her shoulder,
I'm casually opening a can of soda and  just empting it on the back seats.
And they come running over my... just, "What are you doing?" I said, it's a thing, it's just a thing.
And I'm really glad I did that because at the end of weekends as I was driving to their home,
little Chris who was about 8 at that time, he had a flu and he threw up all over the back seats of my car.
But I don't care how much value you get out of earning a nice shiny pristine thing.
It is as good as I felt knowing that I made an 8-year boy not feel guilty, just cause he had the flu.

 

Next thing, you better decide early on if you're a Tigger or and  Eyeore.
Tiggers are energetic, they're optimistic. they're curious, they're enthusiastic and they have fun.
And never, ever understimatethe importance of having fun.
I am dying soon, and I'm choosing to have fun today, tomorrow and every other day I have left.
If you want to achieve your dreams, you'd better work and play well with others.
And that means, you'd better live with integrity, simple advice that you find hard to follow and just tell the truth.
Second thing, when you screw-up, appologize, there're a lot of bad appologies in America.
Agood appology has three parts, "I'm sorry", "It was my fault", "How do I make it right"?
Most people skip that the third part, that's how you can tell sincerity. 
The last thing is that we all have the people that we don't like.
They could've done things we don't like, and what I have found is no one is pure evil.
If you wait long enough, they'll show you their good side.
You can't make them do it in a hurry but you can be patient.
Show gratitude.
When I got tenure there is a young faculty member, about fifteen young kids have been working in my research lab
and I took them all down to Disneyworld for a week on my nickel.
One of my colleagues said, "This must have cost you an arm sand a leg... how could you do it?
I said these kids just worked day and night for years so that I could get the best job in the world for life.
How could I not do it?
When gratitude is a very simple thing and it's a very powerful thing.

 

And lastly, I don't think complaining and whining really solves the problem.
This is Jackie Robinson, the first black major leaguer.
It had been in his contract not to complain, if people spit on him.
All right I don't care if you're Jackie Robinson or if you're guy like me who has only got couple of months to live.
You can choose to take your final time and energy and effort or you can spend it complaining
or you can spend it playing the game hard.
Which is probably gonna be more helpful to you in the long run?

 

Now I told you this is a part of lecture series at Canegie Mellon University.
And it's important for you to know, why I gave the talk. All right.
The talk isn't just about how to achieve your childhood dreams it's much broader than that.
It's about how to live your life.
Because if you lead your life in the right way, the karma will take care of itself.
The dreams will come to you.
If you live properly, the dreams will come to you.
I know it's great that so many people are benefit it from this lecture.
But the truth of matter is, I didn't even really give it to the 400 people at Carnegie Mellon who came.
I only worked this lecture for three people and when they are older, they'll watch it.

 

Thank you.