achieving your childhood dreams (lecture)

The piece was about a professor in Carnegie Mellon University, Randy Pausch, who's been diagnosed with incurable pancreatic cancer in the Summer of 2006, and a lecture he gave about achieving childhood dreams in September of 2007¹.

If the article was touching, the lecture was magnificent.

It is a little over an hour. A well spent hour, and so much that I have already seen it twice!
But then again, I'm a bit of a sucker for these kinds of things.

What does this one have in special? Well, it is simultaneously interesting, thought-provoking and it still manages to leave you with that feeling good sensation in your essence!

It really is a trip worth taking (in my opinion). It's not like I'm promising a life-changing experience², but it should at least provide some food for thought, and who knows, maybe even stir a teensy-weensy-bit the way you look at the world.


Anyway, I'm not going to stretch myself on this post³.
Link bag ahead!

If you need an appetizer you can find a small video-piece about the lecture here (you can think of it as a trailer).

If you are ready to take the red pill⁴, you can either go for the lower quality version (Google Video), or the higher quality one (you might have to manually change the format to QuickTime).

If you want more information about Randy or his condition, please head on to his home page.

Now, just in case you don't have the time (or will - slacker! :P) to see the piece in its entirety, here are a couple of quotes I took from it, for your neuronal pleasure.

An interesting and constructive way to look at brick walls:
(the ones that so often creep up in our path, over the course of our lives)
"The brick walls are there for a reason.
The brick walls are not there to keep us out.
The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something...
Because the brick walls are there to stop people who don't want it badly enough.
They're there to stop the other people."


And an insight on achieving dreams:
"It's not about how to achieve your dreams, it's about how to lead your life,
if you lead your life the right way, the karma will take care of itself, the dreams will come to you"

To wrap it up, I have to say that one of the things that impressed me most, and one of the reasons for me tearing up⁵, was his positive attitude in face of a deadly illness, and his wish to leave a legacy for his kids, something for his 3 young children to remember their father by (in the end he says the lecture was really meant for them).


And then I have to admit that after spewing my bit about bad teachers, I think I would have loved to have taken his Building Virtual Worlds course...

—

¹ In a series called Journeys, but which was previously named Last Lecture: if you had one last lecture to give before you died, what would it be?

² For that, you should consider buying a mac! - I'm pretty sure I just made some mortal enemies with that one! ;)

³ It'll be a first!

⁴ And find out what's up in Wonderland this time of year!

⁵ Oh yeah!... I teared up alright!...