Lesson from Randy Pausch

Earlier this week we had a posting about Randy Pausch, the Carnegie Mellon professor whose inspirational "last lecture" became such a phenomenon over the past six months or so, and who just passed away this weekend from pancreatic cancer. I just saw the ABC special on his life and felt compelled to add to the previous post.

For those of you who haven't seen the video you owe it to yourself to see it. You can then come to your own conclusions why it's impacted so many people.

Here are a few nuggets of wisdom from his lecture:

1. “Experience is what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted.”
2. “It’s better to fail spectacularly then to pass along and do something which is mediocre.’”
3. “Never lose the child-like wonder.”
4. “When you’re screwing up and nobody’s saying anything to you anymore, that means they’ve given up on you.”
5. Be good at something; it makes you valuable.
6. “It’s cool to meet your boyhood idol. It’s even cooler when he comes to you to see what you’re doing in your lab.”
7. “If you live your life the right way, the karma will take care of itself, and the dreams will come to you.”
8. "If we do something which is pioneering, we will get arrows in the back. But at the end of the day, a whole lot of people will have a whole lot of fun."
9. "we cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand"

He lived a life where he "left it all on the field" . We could all aspire to be that courageous.


Peace Out,
Ben