R.I.P. Randy Pausch

You remem­ber all that buzz about “The Last Lec­ture” last Sep­tem­ber?¹I found out today that the title of Randy’s lec­ture was actu­al­ly “Real­ly Achiev­ing Your Child­hood Dreams.” I do hope you watched it—it was well worth the time. It’s still avail­able, too.

Randy Pausch, the lec­tur­er, died yes­ter­day. He was just 47 and leaves a wife and 3 small chil­dren. I know that he did that par­tic­u­lar lec­ture because he knew that he had ter­mi­nal can­cer, but it’s still dis­ap­point­ing that such a won­der­ful man is gone far, far too soon.

A few quo­ta­tions from the lecture:

• “…when you see your­self doing some­thing bad­ly and nobody’s both­er­ing to tell you any­more, that’s a very bad place to be. Your crit­ics are the ones telling you they still love you and care.”
• “Expe­ri­ence is what you get when you did­n’t get what you wanted.”
• “It’s not about how to achieve your dreams, it’s all about lead­ing your life. If you lead your life in a right way, kar­ma will take care of itself. And dreams will come to you.”
• [Quot­ing a CMU secretary]“This advice is good for the ladies: when it comes to men that are roman­ti­cal­ly inter­est­ed in you, it’s real­ly sim­ple: just don’t lis­ten to any­thing they have to say; pay atten­tion to what they do.” (Cyn­thi­a’s note: good advice for men and women!)
• “If I only had three words of advice, they would be, Tell the Truth. If got three more words, I’d add, all the time.”