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CMU Professor Randy Pausch's 'Last Lecture'
This is a bit of an unusual story for Slashdot- it's the "Last Lecture" of a professor at CMU who is terminally ill. His early research in VR has benefited everyone and even if you have never heard of Randy Pausch I think this is worth your time. It's a 2 hour long wmv filled with insight, laughs and wisdom from a man who has really done some amazing work. I've been watching it all morning and I think it would really be worth your time if you can spare it to listen to what he has to say. From virtual reality to education to stuffed animals and childhood dreams, there's a lot here worth your time.
Thanks drew for the link. Update: 09/21 15:44 GMT by Z : The link is already a little shakey, so you might want to turn to this cut up YouTube version of the talk instead.
I havent seen the lecture, but the story in some Pittsburgh newspaper (sorry, dont have the link - it appeared on reddit yesterday) is really moving. Amazing, so 'close' to death but still in such good spirits. Sad that i came to know of such a great spirit when i know i wont be hearing more from/about him. Sad indeed.
This is actually the type of story I love to see on Slashdot. A nice break from yet another "YRO" stuff.
because they are worried that anything over 10 minutes is probably a copyright violation....they should at least create some mechanism whereby material that provably doesn't violate copyrights could have more than 10 minutes alloted to it....how you would prove it is another issue entirely, but I would imagine they could implement some type of peer review system.
Monstar L
It was an amazing lecture. If you dare to dream and dare to follow through, then he's the man to emulate.
It's kind of off-topic, but I read some inspirational lecture slides by Randy Pausch about time management a little while ago. In light of his illness, I guess there's two ways to take it: Perhaps time management isn't that important in the end, or perhaps the limited amount of time each of us may have makes it even more important.
(Or, I suppose, the stress related to worrying about time management may affect your health...)
Haha, me too (I was one of Randy's students back when he was at UVa). I didn't get too into Doom, but when the Quake test code came out, many of us spent pretty much every waking hour playing, for several months. In the meantime, we were supposed to be working on an Alice deliverable for SIGGRAPH. I think the turning point for my entire life was a few months before SIGGRAPH, when Randy called a couple of us out for being too much play and not enough work. I went cold turkey, and didn't pick up another video game for 10 years. I firmly believe if he hadn't done that, I'd have accomplished very little professionally, and would be holding down a crappy 9-5 mid-level programming job while thinking forward to what I was going to play on my XBox 360 on any given night. To this day, I can't really get much enjoyment out of a video game, but I think that's a good thing! Randy definitely taught me to pick a prize and keep my eye on it. He used to like to tell me, "John, you're a strong rocket with no fins," that I would never get to the moon and would come crashing back to earth if I didn't focus. I didn't like it at the time, but I needed to hear it. I think about that advice all the time, and it is just as relevant to me today. Randy has always attracted amazing talent and amazing people. The people in that lab were the greatest group of people I ever worked with in many respects. I'm proud they're my friends, and I'm thankful to Randy for providing the environment and putting us together.
Ah, yes, who could forget Randy taking out his frustrations with a VCR by smashing it with a sledge hammer on the first day of class? I definitely credit Randy and that class for getting me to prioritize the end users above almost everybody else.
This was the most valuable lecture I've ever attended. And it's the kind of lecture I can talk about with my girlfriend, with my friends, and with anyone I care about. It's the stuff of life.
This man has lived an amazing life, and no doubt, this gives him the courage and the peace of mind to leave in such a graceful way, in an ultimate act of generosity. "Take a piece of me" he said somewhere at the beginning, when inviting people in the audience to take away his stuffed animals. And I feel I received a piece of him, even though I am thousands of kilometers away from this great person.
If you want your children to persevere in their lives and reach their dreams, show them this lecture (I saw the videos on YouTube), and talk about it with them.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Perhaps time management isn't that important in the end, or perhaps the limited amount of time each of us may have makes it even more important.
.38 Mannlicher and a one-way ticket to Washington, D.C. Consequently, my eulogy would depend entirely on how I behaved during the last five minutes of my life. Why should anyone be all that concerned about what people have to say about my Fark and Slashdot habits?
Yeah, that's the question I had when I read through his PowerPoint slides yesterday morning, after the WSJ video came up in the course of my daily hour of mindless Fark surfing.
Pausch's methods are great for people who value a highly-regimented life, or who require the same to accomplish anything at all. There are people like that, and maybe he's one of them, but he overgeneralizes to a criminal extent, IMHO. Most of the worthwhile things I've accomplished can trace their beginnings to sitting around daydreaming and doing not much of anything, or looking for an excuse to put something else off. Hell, I wouldn't have seen his video and slides in the first place if I hadn't been killing time surfing the Web, right?
Ultimately, I spent half an hour watching the slides, and then went back to finish my daily list of unimportant links on Fark. I'll admit I was a little unsettled by one of the suggestions he raises ("Write your own eulogy. What do you want it to say?") because frankly, I don't know if people would find enough interesting things about me to even bother attending my funeral, and of course that bugs me. Everybody wants to leave a meaningful legacy, right? But ultimately, living by what you want your eulogist to say is just another way of living according to other people's standards. I finally managed to refute Pausch's dictums by imagining myself trying to persuade a Zen Buddhist practitioner to follow them.
You have to go your own way in life, and if you're lucky, you'll have the chance to determine how you die as well. If I were in Prof. Pausch's shoes, I'd like to think I'd wrap things up on my own terms, with a
http://www.mininova.org/tor/900739
Try that. I hope it's ok, I didn't have a chance to preview the wmv, no graphics on that machine.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
I had the pleasure of taking Randy's first course on "User Interfaces" back in 92 or 93. How many courses have you heard of where the professor begins the first class by assailing the poor UIs of clock radios and VCRs only to immediately smash them Gallagher style in front of a classroom of undergrads. Randy was one of three truly inspirational teachers that I had the pleasure of studying under during my entire formal education. I still retain and use much of the knowledge that I learned from him.
Godspeed Randy.
I was in the 10th row, or so. The talk was given in the biggest auditorium on campus, with overflow locations in other big rooms watching it onscreen. I have to say that this really was one of the most moving, intense moments I've ever experienced. This was compounded by the sense that it was being shared with thousands of other people laughing, thinking, and occasionally crying together. At the close of his talk he received a standing ovation that did not even begin to wane after what seemed like ten minutes, until Randy Bryant (in my opinion somewhat rudely) brought it to an end. For that hour, all of CMU was on the same page. In the days since then I've had conversations with several people who were there, and my sense is that people will remember the talk and Randy Pausch's message for the rest of their lives. I know I will. Especially since he's a nerdy smartass just like me.
He is... under the label biggest dick and largest ego.
His ego is, I swear to God, bigger than that of Steve Jobs, really, no joke. When I was in school at CMU he required an Interview (uppercase I) to get into his class. What kind of professor tells undergrads that they don't deserve to have "an educational experience" in 3d, VR, game technology, etc?
I sumbitted. I didn't want to because i wholey disagreed with his philosophy of education. His class seemed interesting enough that i let it go. The interview went something like this:
Me: Hello, Professor. Your class sounds very interesting and I'd like to take it.
Randy: Hi. So your a white upper class yuppy student who thinks they deserves whatever they want. {sarcasm}Greeeeeaaaat.{/sarcasm} What aspect of my class are you interested in?
I swear on the holy bible it was the first thing out of his mouth! He still admitted me to his class... I emailed him back saying i wasn't going to take it.
Even though he was a complete ass-hole to me I still respect _some_ of the work he's done. One exception is this, I did a technology review of Alice at one point. It was not impressive coming from an experience of writing a 3d game engine and scripting system. He really does think he's "THE BIG SHIT" when in fact he is just "a shit."
That is just my experience with him. Has anyone else met the guy?
Dear Randy,
I'm sorry to hear about your condition. No one deserves it. My positive thoughts tonight are with you. May you live a painless and pleasant life that remains. Also, could you not be a prick to those around you?
javalizard
I had Randy Pausch for an undergrad CS class at UVA in either 88 or 89.... so that was either his first or second year teaching there. Without a doubt, he was the best teacher I had in all four years. I can only imagine that he got even better after almost 20 years of practice. He truly engaged the students. I've been in the software business for 17 years now, and I continue to enjoy it today. I have to think he's partly the reason I ended up there (since I was in the EE program).
http://www.k5n.us
Those two gents made a huge impact upon me when I was growing through high school, and all I had access to were a few recordings and videos of them speaking, but the philosophies they broadcast were powerful enough to change me forever.
Teachers of this caliber are golden.
The very best thing you can do for the world is to Live Your Light. --Just doing so and encouraging others to do so changes the world in ways which are not immediately obvious, but it is enough to win the war against the dark side.
-FL