Professor Randy Pausch from Carnegie Mellon University lectured to 400 people. This last lecture of his was held on September 18th, 2007, and was called, “Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams”. This lecture informed his audience about his pancreatic cancer that is taking over his pancreas and that he will die in just a matter of short months. Randy presented himself as someone invincible and healthy as can be. He stood confident, energetic, cheerful, and hilarious.
As Randy begins his lecture, he has the audience laughing and engaged. He walks on the stage with complete confidence. He does not seem unhealthy but rather strong. His humor is presented from the moment he walks on to the stage. He first shows the cat scans of the ten tumors that are in his tumor, and that he is living his last three to six healthy months left of life. Most people would try to get sympathy from the audience but Randy says that even though he has the best doctors trying to treat him, he can’t change the fact that he has pancreatic cancer. He just has to respond to it and that in life no one can change the cards they are dealt. He then explains to the audience that he is not depressed, not in denial, but just aware with everything that is happening to his body and life. He has three beautiful young children and a loving spouse; so he is happy with the life he is able to live at this moment in time. Randy engages the audience right from the start by talking about his good health. Randy explains how he is probably in better health and stays in better shape then most of the audience. He then shows the audience by making a joke following with about ten pushups he does on stage. Not only does he do regular pushups but pushups with only one hand as well as claps in between each one. During this section of the lecture the audience is laughing extremely loud. Randy knows how to get the audience involved by his actions and humor. After he talked a little bit about his life and family, he points out the main topics of his lecture. He is not giving this lecture to talk about cancer, wife and dreams, or spirituality and religion because it already consumes the majority of his life and he will not be able to give the lecture without crying.
Randy’s majority of the lecture went through his six childhood dreams, how to enable the dreams of others, and lessons learned in life. The dreams consisted of; being in zero gravity, play in an NFL football league, be an author in the world book encyclopedia, meeting captain Kirk, winning a stuffed animal, and being an imagineer. He takes about ten minutes for each of these dreams, and pictures and stories of each of them happening in his life. As he talks there is a picture slide show behind him, this enables the audience to see the memories that he is referring too, and allows them to feel apart of his past. Randy achieved every one of his childhood dreams throughout his life, and made sure he did so once he was diagnosed.
During his entire lecture, Randy is constantly moving his hands and brings the audience into his stories by talking in dialogue form between his friends and coworkers. It felt as though he was making sure the audience felt every emotion he went through during his experiences. Another way Randy shows emotion and engages the audience is by changing his tone of voice between the dialogues of all the different people he refers to in his stories. Each person he acts as he changes his voice as well as his mannerisms. This then turns to the audience hysterically laughing and wanting to hear more.
Randy was a teacher at Carnegie Mellon for a Building Virtual Worlds class. He taught this class after experiencing many opportunities in the imagineering job force. This class was all group projects on creating spectacular projects every two weeks of the semester. Randy loved teaching and that his favorite moment about teaching is the bonding the students were able to create with one another. Randy states, “I can’t tell you before hand, but right before they present it I can tell you if the world’s good just by the body language. If they’re standing close to each other, the world is good”. This statement explains that Randy believes that when people bond just by doing a simple project, the world is in a good place and people support each other.
The final section of Randy’s lecture focus on the lessons he has learned. After each one of the lessons he uses his own experiences as examples. One life lesson is to never give up. As Randy was applying for college he got wait listed to Brown University. This was his dream school so every day he would call the admissions office and beg to be let in. This relentlessness gave him his acceptance to Brown and an amazing education. Another lesson he describes is to apologize when you screw up and to focus on other people instead of yourself. He then goes on to explain that the day before the lecture was his wife’s birthday and the focus today was on himself. His wife then comes onto the stage and Randy asks the audience to sing her happy birthday as a cake and a candle is put onto the stage. Even though this lecture is one of his biggest moments, Randy gave the attention to his wife to the entire audience. Randy’s final point talks about the “head fake,” which explains that life is not about achieving dreams, it is about how to lead a good life. By leading life the right way, karma will take care of everything, and the dreams will then appear.
Once Randy said, “Goodnight,” to the audience, they applauded with a standing ovation for 90 seconds. Then after a final speaker finished the lecture, the audience stood for another standing ovation. Randy had all eyes on him for his entire hour and fifteen minute lecture. He was respected by all 400 people in the room and the people he referred to in his speech. Randy gave life lessons, told touching stories, and proved to the world that even though he will be dead in a matter of months, life is a privilege and live like every day is the last. The end can come suddenly, and so have fun and do not regret anything but learn. Randy’s last lecture was extremely powerful and millions of viewers learned from his words.
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