Pausch Last Lecture

On September 18, 2007, Dr. Pausch gave his memorable “last lecture” at Carnegie Mellon University. It is a tradition at Carnegie Mellon University that when a professor is retiring, they give one last lecture as their final goodbye. The idea of this lecture is to give an hour long speech that covers everything an individual would want to say if you were hypothetically dying. In spite of this, in Dr. Pausch’s case, he was literally dying with a diagnosis of terminal pancreatic cancer this being the “elephant in the room”. He then spends a minute discussing his condition where he gave detail about his ten tumors on his liver. Pausch looks like an average, healthy man, but looks can be deceiving. His doctors estimated he had about six more months
Pausch’s main messages was having fun at all times even through hard times, such as himself in his final days of life. He explained that there are two types of people those who are always willing to look at the bright side of things and have fun, and others who mope around and feel sorry for themselves. Pausch’s message reached the audience by the quality of energy and enthusiasm which displayed how truly passionate he was about his topic. His lecture was more appealing because it was very upbeat with his high energy and also engaging with the audience. In conclusion of his speech he left with a extremely powerful message and challenge for the audience “It’s not how you achieve your dreams, it’s how you lead your life. If you lead life the right way karma will take care of itself. The dream will come to you”. His speech was created for his children, encouraging them to aspire to be something great and always work towards their goals in life. At the end of his presentation, Pausch makes a strong conclusion. He recaps everything he has displayed in his speech. By doing this, it instills the overall message of his presentation, and the main points he touched upon to the audience. People of every day life can be inspired by his