Randy Pausch Last Lecture: Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams (Transcript)

Carnegie Mellon Professor Randy Pausch’s last lecture titled “Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams” was delivered on September 18, 2007 in a packed McConomy Auditorium at the CMU, where he talked on his childhood dreams, enabling the dreams of others and some lessons learned in his journey of life. Below is the full transcript of the lecture by Randy…

Introduction

It’s wonderful to be here. What Indira didn’t tell you is that this lecture series used to be called “The Last Lecture.”

If you had one last lecture to give before you died, what would it be? I thought, “Damn, I finally nailed the venue, and they renamed it.”

So, in case there’s anybody who wandered in and doesn’t know the backstory, my dad always taught me, when there’s an elephant in the room, introduce them. If you look at my CAT scans, there are approximately ten tumors in my liver, and the doctors told me three to six months of good health left. That was a month ago, so you can do the math. I have some of the best doctors in the world.

So that is what it is. We can’t change it, and we just have to decide how we’re going to respond to that. We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand.

If I don’t seem as depressed or morose as I should be, sorry to disappoint you. And I assure you, I am not in denial. It’s not like I’m not aware of what’s going on. My family, my three kids, my wife, we just decamped. We bought a lovely house in Chesapeake, Virginia, near Norfolk, and we’re doing that because that’s a better place for the family to be, down the road.