Randy Pausch’s Last Lecture: Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams
Given at Carnegie Mellon University
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
McConomy Auditorium
For more information, see www.randypausch.com
© Copyright Randy Pausch, 2007
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Note that this transcript is provided as a public service but may contain transcription errors.
Introduction by Indira Nair, Carnegie Mellon’s Vice Provost for Education:
Hi. Welcome. It’s my pleasure to introduce you to the first of our new university’s lectures titled
Journeys – lectures in which members of our community will share with us reflections and insights
on their personal and professional journeys. Today’s Journey’s lecture as you all know is by
Professor Randy Pausch. The next one is on Monday, September 24th by Professor Roberta Klatzky.
To introduce Professor Randy Pausch, our first Journeys speaker, I would like to introduce Randy’s
friend and colleague, Steve Seabolt. Steve has been at Electronic Arts for six years and is the Vice
President of Global Brand Development for The Sims label at Electronic Arts. As you all know, The
Sims is one of the most, if not the most successful PC games in the world, with sales approaching
over $100,000,000. Prior to that, Steve was the Vice President for Strategic Marketing and
Education at EA, bridging academia and Electronic Arts. His goal was to work with academics so
there was an effective educational pathway for kids with building games as their dreams. It was in
that role that Randy and Steve became colleagues and friends. Before Electronic Arts, Steve was the
worldwide Ad Director for Time Magazine and CEO of Sunset Publishing, which is a very favorite
magazine in the Southwest, and as CEO there, one of the things he started was school tours,
because like Randy he shares a passion for inspiring kids of all ages to share their excitement for
science and technology.
So to introduce Randy, his friend Steve Seabolt. Steve?
[applause]
Steve Seabolt, Vice President of Worldwide Publishing and Marketing for Electonic Arts (EA):
Thank you very much. I don’t mean to sound ungracious by correcting you, but given that our PR
people are probably watching this on webcast, I’d catch heck if I went home and didn’t say that it
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P a u s c h P a g e | 2
was 100 million units for The Sims. [laughter] Not that big numbers matter to Electronic Arts.
[laughter]
I don’t see any empty seats anywhere, which is a good thing, which means I just won a bet from
Randy as a matter of fact. Depending upon who’s version of the story you hear, he either owes me
20 dollars or his new Volkswagen. [laughter] So, I’ll take the car.
It’s a pleasure to be here, thank you very much. I’m going to start by covering Randy’s academic
credentials. It’s a little bizarre for me to be standing here at Carnegie Mellon, which is a school I
couldn’t get into no matter how much I contributed to this institution. [laughter] But, no really, I’m
not kidding! You all think, oh gosh he’s humble. Really, no, I’m not humble at all. Very average SAT
scores, you know, right in the middle of my high school class of 900. Anyway, Randy. Randy earned
– it really pisses me off that Randy’s so smart—actually I called him, we decided about, what, four
weeks, ago and we heard the news went from bad to horrific. It was on a Wednesday night and I
said look – we have two choices. We can play this really straight and very emotional , or we can go
to dark humor. And for those of you who know Randy well, he was like oh, dark humor! So I called
him the next day and I was like, dude you can’t die. And he’s like, what do you mean? And I said,
well, when you die, the average of IQ of Seabolt’s friends is going to like drop 50 points. [laughter] To
which he responded, we need to find you some smarter friends. [laughter] So you’re all smart
because you’re here, so if you want to be my friend, I’ll be over in a corner of the reception room.
Randy earned his undergraduate degree in Computer Science at Brown in 1982. His Ph.D. in CS from
Carnegie Mellon in 1988 and taught at the University of Virginia where he was granted tenure a year
early. He joined the Carnegie Mellon faculty in 1997 with appointments in the CS, HCI and Design
departments. He has authored or co-authored five books and over 60 reviewed journal and
conference proceeding articles, none of which I would understand. With Don Marinelli, he founded
the Entertainment Technology Center, which quickly became the gold standard organization for
training artists and engineers to work together. It is my view and the view of our company,
Electronic Arts, that the ETC is the interactive program by which all others in the world are judged.
I met Randy in the Spring of 2004, and when I look back it’s sort of hard to imagine it’s only been
three years given the depth of our friendship. The ETC already had a very strong relationship with
EA and with Randy. And Randy as he always does, for those of you who know him well, wanted to
learn more, with his own eyes, about how the games business works, and how games really got
made. So he spent a summer in residence at EA, and I was his primary contact point. We were in
my view the odd couple. Randy the brilliant, charming, Carnegie educated CS professor. And me
who went to the University of Iowa on a wing and a prayer. We spent a lot of time together that
semester and for those of you who know Randy well, that’s a lot of turkey sandwiches on white
bread with mayo. [laughter, clapping] My kids tease me about being “white.” There’s nobody more
“white” than Randy. [laughter] We spent an enormous amount of time together. We taught each
other about each other’s very interesting, strange cultures to the other. Academic versus the
corporate world. And we developed a deep friendship woven together with stories about our kids,
our wives, our parents, as well as deep discussions about the paramount nature of integrity in
P a u s c h P a g e | 3
everything you do, family first, religion, our shared joy in connecting people and ideas, and
deploying money and influence to do good. And the importance of having a lot of laughs along the
way.
Randy’s dedication to making the world a better place is self evident to anyone who has crossed
paths with him. Whether it’s directly influencing students, creating organizations like the ETC,
building tools like Alice or doing what he probably does best, which is bridging cultures. As Ben
Gordon, EA’s Chief Creative Officer, says of Randy, even more important than Randy’s academic,
philanthropic, and entrepreneurial accomplishments has been his humanity and the enthusiasm he
brings to students and coworkers on a daily basis.
For those of you who know Randy, Randy brings a particular zest for life and humor, even while
facing death. To Randy, this is simply another adventure. It is my great honor to introduce Dylan,
Logan and Chloe’s dad, Jai’s husband, and my very dear friend, Dr. Randy Pausch. [applause]
Randy Pausch:
[responding to a standing ovation] Make me earn it. [laughter]
It’s wonderful to be here. What Indira didn’t tell you is that this lecture series used to be called the
Last Lecture. If you had one last lecture to give before you died, what would it be? I thought, damn,
I finally nailed the venue and they renamed it. [laughter]
So, you know, in case there’s anybody who wandered in and doesn’t know the back story, my dad
always taught me that when there’s an elephant in the room, introduce them. If you look at my CAT
scans, there are approximately 10 tumors in my liver, and the doctors told me 3-6 months of good
health left. That was a month ago, so you can do the math. I have some of the best doctors in the
world. Microphone’s not working? Then I’ll just have to talk louder. [Adjusts mic] Is that good? All
right. So that is what it is. We can’t change it, and we just have to decide how we’re going to
respond to that. We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand. If I don’t
seem as depressed or morose as I should be, sorry to disappoint you. [laughter] And I assure you I
am not in denial. It’s not like I’m not aware of what’s going on. My family, my three kids, my wife,
we just decamped. We bought a lovely house in Virginia, and we’re doing that because that’s a
better place for the family to be, down the road. And the other thing is I am in phenomenally good
health right now. I mean it’s the greatest thing of cognitive dissonance you will ever see is the fact
that I am in really good shape. In fact, I am in better shape than most of you. [Randy gets on the
ground and starts doing pushups] [Applause] So anybody who wants to cry or pity me can down and
do a few of those, and then you may pity me. [laughter]
All right, so what we’re not talking about today, we are not talking about cancer, because I spent a
lot of time talking about that and I’m really not interested. If you have any herbal supplements or
remedies, please stay away from me. [laughter] And we’re not going to talk about things that are
even more important than achieving your childhood dreams. We’re not going to talk about my wife,
we’re not talking about my kids. Because I’m good, but I’m not good enough to talk about that
P a u s c h P a g e | 4
without tearing up. So, we’re just going to take that off the table. That’s much more important.
And we’re not going to talk about spirituality and religion, although I will tell you that I have
achieved a deathbed conversion. [dramatic pause] … I just bought a Macintosh. [laughter and
clapping] Now I knew I’d get 9% of the audience with that … All right, so what is today’s talk about
then? It’s about my childhood dreams and how I have achieved them. I’ve been very fortunate that
way. How I believe I’ve been able to enable the dreams of others, and to some degree, lessons
learned. I’m a professor, there should be some lessons learned and how you can use the stuff you
hear today to achieve your dreams or enable the dreams of others. And as you get older, you may
find that “enabling the dreams of others” thing is even more fun.
So what were my childhood dreams? Well, you know, I had a really good childhood. I mean, no
kidding around. I was going back through the family archives, and what was really amazing was, I
couldn’t find any pictures of me as a kid where I wasn’t smiling. And that was just a very gratifying
thing. There was our dog, right? Aww, thank you. And there I actually have a picture of me
dreaming. I did a lot of that. You know, there’s a lot of wake up’s! I was born in 1960. When you
are 8 or 9 years old and you look at the TV set, men are landing on the moon, anything’s possible.
And that’s something we should not lose sight of, is that the inspiration and the permission to
dream is huge.
So what were my childhood dreams? You may not agree with this list, but I was there. [laughter]
Being in zero gravity, playing in the National Football League, authoring an article in the World Book
Encyclopedia – I guess you can tell the nerds early. [laughter] Being Captain Kirk, anybody here have
that childhood dream? Not at CMU, nooooo. I wanted to become one of the guys who won the big
stuffed animals in the amusement park, and I wanted to be an Imagineer with Disney. These are not
sorted in any particular order, although I think they do get harder, except for maybe the first one.
OK, so being in zero gravity. Now it’s important to have specific dreams. I did not dream of being an
astronaut, because when I was a little kid, I wore glasses and they told me oh, astronauts can’t have
glasses. And I was like, mmm, I didn’t really want the whole astronaut gig, I just wanted the floating.
So, and as a child [laughter], prototype 0.0. [slide shown of Randy as a child lying in floating-
formation on a table top] But that didn’t work so well, and it turns out that NASA has something
called the Vomit Comet that they used to train the astronauts. And this thing does parabolic arcs,
and at the top of each arc you get about 25 seconds where you’re ballistic and you get about, a
rough equivalent of weightlessness for about 25 seconds. And there is a program where college
students can submit proposals and if they win the competition, they get to fly. And I thought that
was really cool, and we had a team and we put a team together and they won and they got to fly.
And I was all excited because I was going to go with them. And then I hit the first brick wall, because
they made it very clear that under no circumstances were faculty members allowed to fly with the
teams. I know, I was heartbroken. I was like, I worked so hard! And so I read the literature very
carefully and it turns out that NASA, it’s part of their outreach and publicity program, and it turns
out that the students were allowed to bring a local media journalist from their home town.
[laughter] And, [deep voice] Randy Pausch, web journalist. [regular voice] It’s really easy to get a
press pass! [laughter] So I called up the guys at NASA and I said, I need to know where to fax some
P a u s c h P a g e | 5
documents. And they said, what documents are you going to fax us? And I said my resignation as
the faculty advisor and my application as the journalist. And he said, that’s a little transparent, don’t
you think? And I said, yeah, but our project is virtual reality, and we’re going to bring down a whole
bunch of VR headsets and all the students from all the teams are going to experience it and all those
other real journalists are going to get to film it. Jim Foley’s [who is nodding in the audience] going
oh you bastard, yes. And the guy said, here’s the fax number. So, indeed, we kept our end of the
bargain, and that’s one of the themes that you’ll hear later on in the talk, is have something to bring
to the table, right, because that will make you more welcome. And if you’re curious about what
zero gravity looks like, hopefully the sound will be working here. [slide shows videotape from
Randy’s zero gravity experience] There I am. [laughter] You do pay the piper at the bottom. [laugher,
as the people in the video crash to the floor of the plane on the video] So, childhood dream number
one, check.
OK, let’s talk about football. My dream was to play in the National Football League. And most of
you don’t know that I actually – no. [laughter] No, I did not make it to the National Football League,
but I probably got more from that dream and not accomplishing it than I got from any of the ones
that I did accomplish. I had a coach, I signed up when I was nine years old. I was the smallest kid in
the league, by far. And I had a coach, Jim Graham, who was six-foot-four, he had played linebacker
at Penn State. He was just this hulk of a guy and he was old school. And I mean really old school.
Like he thought the forward pass was a trick play. [laughter] And he showed up for practice the first
day, and you know, there’s big hulking guy, we were all scared to death of him. And he hadn’t
brought any footballs. How are we going to have practice without any footballs? And one of the
other kids said, excuse me coach, but there’s no football. And Coach Graham said, right, how many
men are on a football field at a time? Eleven on a team, twenty-two. Coach Graham said, all right,
and how many people are touching the football at any given time? One of them. And he said, right,
so we’re going to work on what those other twenty-one guys are doing. And that’s a really good
story because it’s all about fundamentals. Fundamentals, fundamentals, fundamentals. You’ve got
to get the fundamentals down because otherwise the fancy stuff isn’t going to work. And the other
Jim Graham story I have is there was one practice where he just rode me all practice. 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 rode you pretty hard, didn’t he? I said, yeah. He said, that’s a good thing. He
said, when you’re screwing 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 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.
After Coach Graham, I had another coach, Coach Setliff, and he taught me a lot about the power of
enthusiasm. He did this one thing where only for one play at a time he would put people in at like
the most horrifically wrong position for them. Like all the short guys would become receivers, right?
It was just laughable. But we only went in for one play, right? And boy, the other team just never
knew what hit ‘em them. Because when you’re only doing it for one play and you’re just not where
P a u s c h P a g e | 6
you’re supposed to be, and freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose, boy are you going
to clean somebody’s clock for that one play. And that kind of enthusiasm was great. And to this
day, I am most comfortable on a football field. I mean, it’s just one of those things where, you
know, [pulls out a football] if I’m working a hard problem, people will see me wandering the halls
with one of these things, and that’s just because, you know, when you do something young enough
and you train for it, it just becomes a part of you. And I’m very glad that football was a part of my
life. And if I didn’t get the dream of playing in the NFL, that’s OK. I’ve probably got stuff more
valuable. Because looking at what’s going on in the NFL, I’m not sure those guys are doing so great
right now.
OK, and so one of the expressions I learned at Electronic Arts, which I love, which pertains to this, is
experience is what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted. And I think that’s absolutely
lovely. And the other thing about football is we send our kids out to play football or soccer or
swimming or whatever it is, and it’s the first example of what I’m going to call a head fake, or
indirect learning. We actually don’t want our kids to learn football. I mean, yeah, it’s really nice that
I have a wonderful three-point stance and that I know how to do a chop block and all this kind of
stuff. But we send our kids out to learn much more important things. Teamwork, sportsmanship,
perseverance, etcetera, etcetera. And these kinds of head fake learning are absolutely important.
And you should keep your eye out for them because they’re everywhere.
All right. A simple one, being an author in the World Book Encyclopedia. When I was a kid, we had
the World Book Encyclopedia on the shelf. For the freshman, this is paper. … We used t
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