Randy Pausch's Last Lecture

I thoroughly enjoyed watching Randy Pausch's Last Lecture via YouTube. I can't even imagine being in his shoes during his last months. I am in awe of the great optimism and strength he had. I felt happy, sad, and inspired over the duration of the entire lecture. Dare I say that everyone could find a wealth of wisdom in his lecture that could transcend into their everyday lives. I know I certainly have.

First, he discussed achieving his childhood dreams, which from the beginning of the lecture, I thought that was what the entire hour and sixteen minutes or so would be about. Oh, little did I know. As inspiring enough as a lecture on achieving your childhood dreams may seem to be, it was so much more. His life eventually became more than just his dreams. He discussed wanting to be at zero gravity, meeting Captain Kirk, and being a Disney Imagineer (among other dreams.) Later, he began to describe perhaps the greatest achievement of all, becoming a professor and realizing the need to help so many others achieve their dreams. Randy Pausch went on to discuss at length his work at Carnegie Mellon with Computer Science students and their virtual reality projects.

Pausch gave a lot of advice for everyone. He discussed the importance of feedback. And not just the importance of feedback, but the importance of listening to feedback and responding to it. He said (and I can't quote him exactly) 'that when you know you're doing a bad job and no one is telling you that you are, you're in a very bad place. The critics are the people that love you and want to see you do well.'

For teaching, he discussed the 'head fake,' which is letting a student do something fun while you're teaching them something difficult to learn. There is a project, Alice, that has been in the works for quite sometime now. Alice is a 'head fake' aimed at young students that has a story telling aspect to it that 'tricks' kids into learning how to write code. He knows he will never get to see the finished project but he knows where Alice is headed.