The Last Lecture

Posted by Jeff Lipshaw

Jeff Zaslow has a moving story in today’s Wall Street Journal about the “last lecture” of Prof. Randy Pausch at Carnegie-Mellon, who is forty-six years old, has three small children, and has terminal pancreatic cancer.  I can’t imagine what courage and zest for life he must have.  What a way to see it tested.

Zaslow introduces the story as a particularly poignant and non-academic example of something gaining some currency:  the “‘Last Lecture’ series in which top professors are asked to think deeply about what matters to them and to give hypothetical final talks.  For the audience, the question to be mulled is this:  What wisdom would we impart to the world if we knew it was our last chance?”

This strikes a familiar chord, and perhaps more so if one has spent most of one’s life chasing lucre instead of knowledge.  With a sigh, the Type-A lawyer or business person reflects, “you know, nobody ever says on their deathbed, ‘I wish I had spent more time in the office.'”

What would you say in your last fifty minute lecture?