This is the beginning of the introduction for The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch. The author has now passed away, but he wrote this book as his final testament. Pausch was a Computer Science professor at Carnegie Mellon University. He passed away in 2008 from pancreatic cancer, but gave a last lecture entitled "The Last Lecture: Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams." Below is the video of the original lecture.
Our neighbor just died from pancreatic cancer last week, and just watching the process the past three months has also made me think how I would spend my last days. I guess that would include what my last words would be. I would hope that whatever I would say or however I spent that time, would be meaningful to the loved ones I would leave behind.
ReplyDeleteThere has been a last lecture series at BYU (and other institutions) for sometime. It would be interesting to research those to see if they have the same tone and approach as this one.
ReplyDeleteI like that he starts out with the "I have an engineering problem" metaphor so that right away we know that he is going to talk about this issue openly, practically, and without self pity.
ReplyDeleteI have no idea what I would want my last and final words to be. It is almost scary to try to think of everything I would want to tell my family and friends in that last moment.
ReplyDelete