It is really a sad thing to talk about, yet Randy Pausch died on July 25th after a long honouralbe battle with his Pancreatic cancer. In the case you have not heard about him, he was a professor in the computer science department in the Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). In August of 2007 he has been told that he will be alive just for more 3-6 months. Before that he had done about 1 year surgery and chemotherapy to cure his pancreatic cancer. Here you can find more detailed information. After that he did not give up and he continue his usual life. During that time he took a lecture in CMU called “The Last Lecture” in which he talked about achieving his childhood’s dreams. That lecture become very famous such that right now it has more than 5.5 million views on the YouTube,. Here is that video:
When I watched it again I really felt sorry for him. In this video he is really energetic and “alive”. In the beginning of lecture he cracked some funny jocks to make audiences glad in the case they feel sad for him.Moreover he did some push-ups to show them that he is in the full health condition. It really makes me sad when I watch it again, poor guy … . He also had a blog in which he talked about his treatments and progresses. In the last month he had no posts until a friend of him wrote two posts on July 24th and 25th, the “last post”. Here is the first page of CMU website after his death:
In my opinion the most important thing we can learn from him is in his fantastic quote “You can’t control the cards you’r dealt, just how you play the hand“
August 1, 2008 at 9:13 pm |
Randy’s lectures were amazing. A close relative of mine was recently diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. We are organizing a major 24hour blog-o-thon to raise awareness of cancer (particularly pancreatic cancer) and raise money for research. If you’d like to help out or find out more please let me know. Our site is: http://www.atilus.com/cancer