Randy Pausch - Interview Highlights - 10 Minutes - Inspirational - Meaningful - The Last Lecture

who would have believed that out there in the vast glamour of the internet those endless videos all that noise one earnest looking professor standing at a podium could make 10 million people so far stop and listen wait long enough and people will surprise and impress you the last lecture an annual tradition at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh a speech on personal philosophy by a beloved professor like Randy Pausch famous for making his students believe in themselves no matter the obstacles in their way the brick walls are there for a reason all right 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 so your goals are possible if you get tough with yourself and face difficult truths professor pouch was a scrawny kid in junior league football under a tough coach named Jim Graham there was one practice where he just rode me all practice just you're doing this wrong you're doing this wrong go back and do it again you owe me you're doing push-ups after practice and when it was all over one of the other assistant coaches came over and said yeah coach Graham roads are pretty hard didn't he I said yeah he said that's a good thing he said when you screw it up and nobody's saying anything to you anymore that means they gave up and that's a lesson that stuck with me my whole life is that when you see when you see yourself doing something badly and nobody's bothering to tell you anymore that's a very bad place to be your critics are your ones telling you they still love you and care for ninety minutes gives lessons about living we cannot change the cards we are dealt just how we play the hand and about facing death in case there's anybody who wandered in and doesn't know the back story my dad always taught me was isn't when there's an elephant in the room introduced them at the lecture some of his friends know but others are just learning that he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and it has spread 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 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 and the other thing is I'm in better shape than most of you so anybody who wants to cry or pitter me can come down and do a few of those and then you may pity me so don't try to tell Randy Pausch not to love the life he has left so my next piece of advice is you just have to decide if you're a Tigger or you're at your I think I'm clear where I stand on the great Tigger debate one month after the lecture October 2007 we decide to go to Pittsburgh for an interview with doctor pouch we're in the library of his beloved Carnegie Mellon where ostensibly he was a teacher of computer science Virtual Reality creating a whole program for the school with Professor Don Marinelli but long before his illness professor pouch says he thought the students needed something more how do you behave with integrity how do you behave in a way that other people will respect you and want to keep working with you if I only had three words of advice they would be tell the truth if I got three more words I'd add all the time I'll tell you right now if there's anything I've learned in my career a lot of people don't want the truth a lot of people just want to be patted and stroked and told how wonderful they are so in effect he dared his students to love the truth about themselves they even handed each other report cards on character issues like teamwork next up lessons about fearlessness and the kids said well what content do we make I said hell I don't know you make whatever you want two roles no shooting violence and no pornography and you'd be amazed how many 19 year old boys are completely out of ideas when you take those off we went to him and said we have a couple of ideas this idea here is very safe this idea here with these cell phones is very risky he said go for the risk it's better to fail spectacularly than to than to pass along and you know and do something which is mediocre student Phil light who says professor pouch even created an award for the most glorious failure but the old saying you can always tell the Pioneers by the arrows in their backs through the years some of randy pausch his students balked most of them soared such an awesome awesome once-in-a-lifetime kind of teacher it became this underground thing I'd walk into a class with 50 with 50 students in it and there were 95 people in the room and people's roommates and friends and parents I've never had parents come to class before it was like something I'd never seen before it was unbelievable Jared Cohen is president of Carnegie Mellon here at Carnegie Mellon we don't have big-time sports but when I walked in the room I felt like I had walked into a pep rally for a major football game so it was a thrilling time for Randy Pausch and then one day he felt tired thought maybe he had a kind of flu a little bit weak a little bit bloated feeling I eventually got yellow skin jaundice and itching and we had originally thought I had hepatitis an ultrasound a cat-scan a life changed in a sentence and he said Randy there's a mass on your Pancras and and he said and it's not fair don't think it's unfair we all stand on the dartboard and you know a very small percentage of us are gonna catch the dart labeled pancreatic cancer and I was I was unlucky but it wasn't unfair pancreatic cancer is pretty much the most fatal cancer of all it is ruthless it is brutal very few people beat it and there are lot of reasons for that it's an internal organ that's sort of wrapped in other stuff only 15 to 20 percent of pancreatic cancer patients have any early symptoms I was lucky in that my tumor pressed on the bile duct you don't get enough bile into your system you can't digest your food as well and not to be crass about this but the tell-tale sign is that your stools in the toilet bowl start to float and become less dense and what this means is that you're not digesting fats because you're not getting the bile into your system there was massive surgery to remove 1/3 of his pancreas parts of his stomach a crushing blast of chemotherapy and radiation crushing for body not spirit never once my doctor asked me so are you feeling depressed and I said well compared to an average 46 year old probably but compared to a guy who just had his insides carved out he's in tremendous physical pain and is being told that you know he has a way less than 50/50 chance of living to five years I think I feel pretty good if we just turned the interns head right down not depressed but eight months after the surgery the cancer had come back a dedicated Tigger had to reach inside himself again I've never found anger to make a situation better and right now I've got a finite amount of time and I can spend that time angry where I can spend that time doing something productive and worthwhile and having fun I don't know how to not have fun right I'm dying and I'm having fun he tells me he's trying an experimental vaccine and so far chemotherapy has slowed the progress of the disease and that typically holds on for a couple of months so I may have just doubled my lifespan and you know will you try doing that he told me one of his favorite philosophical sources is that famous newspaper editors letter the one assuring the little girl Virginia there is a Santa Claus the editors letter about your little cynical friends live in a cynical age you say there is no evidence and you can't see but can you see love can you see hope these are the most important things and you can't see them or touch them did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn of course not but that's no proof they're not there that's right so no scientist in the world that can tell you there aren't fairies on the lawn back at the lecture sitting in the audience his wife mother of their three children the children he worries he will not be around to protect we're not gonna talk about my wife we're not throwing my kids because I'm good but I'm not good enough to talk about that without tearing up there is a sadness that comes when I think about my kids and it's not so much a I won't get the experience of being a dad I mean that's sad but the really strong emotions for me are they won't have me for them and that's where it's okay for me to say that's not fair a metaphor I've used is somebody's gonna push my family off a cliff pretty soon and I won't be there to catch them and that breaks my heart but I have some time to sew some nets to cushion fall and that seemed like the best and highest use of my time so I can crop it a bowl and cry or I can get to work on the nets time now for our first interview to end but before I can go the professor stops me to critique what I've done there's one question you didn't ask me Oh which one about people keep asking about making a movie out of my life wait you do your part and my purview I okay yes a movie can't be done no Hollywood actress is pretty enough to play my wife

Channel: wwwgenesisprojectorg

Views: 59,279

Keywords: Randy Pausch, Carnegie Mellon, pancreatic, cancer, death, trials, faith, hope, love, God, The Last Lecture, meaning, inspiration, encouragement, religion

Id: trMSLXYjNf4

Length: 10min 1sec (601 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 21 2010