Randy Pausch and The Last Lecture

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 the people who don't want it badly enough. They're there to stop the other people.
― Randy Pausch, The Last Lecture

Randy Pausch was a Professor of Computer Science, Human-Computer Interaction, and Design at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States.

Pausch learned that he had pancreatic cancer in September 2006, and in August 2007 he was given a terminal diagnosis: "3 to 6 months of good health left". He gave an upbeat lecture titled "The Last Lecture: Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams" [PDF transcript] on September 18, 2007, at Carnegie Mellon, which became a popular YouTube video and led to other media appearances. He then co-authored a book called The Last Lecture on the same theme, which became a New York Times best-seller.

Pausch died of complications from pancreatic cancer on July 25, 2008.

Here is an abridged version of his speech on The Oprah Winfrey Show from YouTube. NITC campus users can download a locally hosted copy of the full lecture video from here [internal link].

Image courtesy: The Legacy of Randy Pausch