The Last Lecture: a Profound Lesson of Life and Death from a Dying Professor

The profoundly inspirational and courageous Randy Pausch is a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon University and Randy is dying from pancreatic cancer. Randy's doctors say he only has a few months to live. Randy Pausch is married with three small children. When Randy's cancer returned after chemo, radiation, and surgery, he prepared and delivered his Last Lecture to his college students in September 2007. I first learned about Randy Pausch from a friend who is being treated for bone cancer. When I viewed the Last Lecture on video, I was overwhelmed by the message Randy prepared to his three children to inspire them to live life to its fullest each and every day.

Randy does not understand why his Last Lecture is so popular and has drawn so much attention in the media. It is simple. Never has the topic of death from a dying husband and father been dealt with using so much dignity and passion for life as Randy displays in his Last Lecture. Never has there been a more effective tool for parents to use in explaining life and death to their children than in the Last Lecture. Never have we been reminded with such immense focus, that our childhood is filled with special dreams and goals that are our roads to happiness and death is just the end road for all of us.

Randy delivered the Last Lecture to his college students mainly for the purpose of having something his children could watch years later and to have something great from which to remember their father. It became so immensely popular, that Oprah invited Dr. Oz and Randy to deliver and discuss the Last Lecture live on the Oprah television show. It is reported that a Disney publishing company paid $6.7 million for the rights to publish a book called The Last Lecture. The city of Pittsburgh declared November 19 as Randy Pausch Day.