Randy Pausch, a young, charismatic professor at Carnegie-Mellon University with pancreatic cancer with only a few week-to-months to live and leaving behind three small children and a wife, delivered an inspiring last lecture "Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams" in September 2007 about the virtues of living with a passion, including pursuing your childhoold dreams. His talk discussed how he achieved his childhood dreams and realistic advice on how you can live your life so that you can make your childhood dreams come true too. The lecture and an abbreviated version was seen by millions from the Internet. "The lecture was for my kids, but if others are finding value in it, that is wonderful," Pausch wrote on his Web site. "But rest assured; I'm hardly unique." Randy Pausch died on Friday, July 25 at the age of forty-seven at his home in Chesapeake, Virginia. The book "The Last Lecture" co-authored by Randy Pausch and Jeffrey Zaslow, a Wall Street Journal writer, leaped to the top of the nonfiction best-seller lists after its publication in April 2008 and remains there on the date of his death.


You can learn more about Randy Pausch and hear a portion of his lecture from the YouTube video below:

As posted on YouTube by the Wall Street Journal Digital Network

You can hear his entire lecture below:

As posted on YouTube by carnegiemellonu

Here are some links for you:
Randy Pausch's Last Lecture
Randy Pausch's website
Randy Pausch's day-to-day update page

Here's Randy Pausch's speech to the May 2008 Carnegie Mellon graduates:

As posted on YouTube by carnegiemellonu