even before he started his lecture. I only hope I’d be half as wise, brave and funny as this 46-year-old Carnegie Mellon University computer-science professor, and video game trailblazer, Randy Pausch was last Tuesday afternoon.
Pausch is one of several U.S. university professors invited to give a best “last lecture.” This is not a call for professors’ best insights on their area of teaching.
It is to answer the question, “What wisdom would we impart to the world if we knew it was our last chance?”
Here’s two pieces of advice he offered as he presented a series of large screen images of his life:
1. “Brick walls are there for a reason. They let us prove how badly we want things."
2. Be more patient. "Wait long enough, and people will surprise and impress you."
Then there’s his “deathbed conversion:” "I just bought a Macintosh."
He started his talk though with a big screen image of his CT scans, pointing out the 10 tumors on his liver. This inventor of “Alice” the software enabling people to "easily create 3-D animations” that was downloaded a million times in a year, this father of three has been told he has only a few months left to live.
