Randy Pausch was a professor at Carnegie Mellon University, or more commonly known simply as MIT. He died on pancreatic cancer on July 25, 2008. In the last months of his life, he gave a stunning lecture giving his last bit of advise to his students. This last lecture entitled "Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams," was not only clever and funny, but full of great advice and lessons on life in general.
Pausch started his last lecture by simply telling the audience a few of his childhood dreams. Some of them involved being a professional football player, an imagine er for Disney, and even being on the Star ship Enterprise as Captain Kirk. Although it seems that he couldn't have possibly attained these early childhood dreams, he actually did achieve some of them. He then went on to say that no dream is unattainable and that they are your dreams, and that you should always try to reach your dreams.
Another thing that he discussed was one of the assignments that he gave one of his classes. It didn't require any books or note books, because he wasn't going to give any lectures and there would be no reading of any text books. He actually split the class in half and gave them a huge group project. One of his ideas was that the best ways of learning was to learn by doing and that hands on projects were in fact the best ways of learning. I thought that this was awesome because I totally agree with that conclusion. He even said that the students met and exceeded the requirements that he gave them. But when one of his student showed him their projects before it was done, he told them that they could do better, so that they would be pushed to do their very best.
It seems that we lost one of the best educators of our time when Randy Pausch die. His last lecture was full of great advice and he really seem to be a truly inspiring individual. The idea that he could give a lecture full of hope and encouragement in the face of death is absolutely amazing.
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