Randy Pausch, a Professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University, passed away from pancreatic cancer in July, 2008. One year ago, on September 18th, 2007, he was one of the speakers in a series of lectures called “Last Lecture”. The idea was, “If you had one lecture to give before you died, what would it be?”

Sadly, he knew this lecture was one of his last ones, so he gave an inspirational talk titled “Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams”. This motivational talk is about life and living. He gives examples from his career about overcoming obstacles and shares the lessons he learned throughout this journey. It’s about an hour long, but definitely worth watching. I especially enjoyed the twist at the end :)

If this is not enough to convince you, I’d say the book version has been #1 on Amazon’s Best Seller list for a long time. Rest in peace Randy Pausch …