The Last Lecture
I just finished a book published in April by Randy Pausch, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University who was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in September, 2007. Pancreatic cancer is very hard to treat — Randy was told that he had a 4 percent chance of survival even with radiation and chemotherapy (the treatments haven’t worked and the cancer is now metastatic). Randy was scheduled to speak in CMU’s “Last Lecture” series, which he agreed to do before he was aware that he had pancreatic cancer. This lecture series serves as a hypothetical “final talk,” i.e., “what wisdom would you try to impart to the world if you knew it was your last chance?” After the diagnosis, Randy decided to go on with the lecture and that it really would be his “last lecture.”
I highly recommend watching the lecture on YouTube (or on DVD from CMU, as well as iTunesU) and reading the book. Proceeds from the book will support Randy’s wife and three children.