The last Lecture

Randy Pausch was an American professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University. Before his death on July 25, 2008 of pancreatic cancer he gave a talk titled "the last lecture" in 2007. Here are the things he emphasized in that lecture:

1. Experience Teaches you a lot: He said, even if you fail in achieving your goal, you learn a lot. The brick walls are there for a reason and that is to know, how passionate were we for a certain thing or object. 

2. Humility: A tree which has more fruits is usually kneed. His father fought in second world war, got the medal for bravery but never bragged about that until family found the medal after his death. Humbleness is really important thing and if you are good at some thing, be cool, do not make other people feel little.

3. Creativity: His parents let me to paint and write on the walls. To be creative you need to express your feelings regardless of what people will think, what people will say etc. This reminds me of an event, when I was young we went to one of uncles home warming party. There I saw kids had written everywhere on walls and I remembered, how another uncle mocked on this thing. 

4. People vs. Things: When Randy bought new car and took that to his sister's home, she started to explain to her kids that do not create mess in uncle Randy's new car etc. He told her, this is just a car, a thing, which is to be used and to be deteriorated and that he could not stand a kid guilty for making car dirty or something. Its good to prefer people over things.

5. Work and play fair with others: Always tell people the truth. If you did something wrong, apologize in a right way and ask the other person if there was anything to correct that mistake. No one is pure evil and if you give people a chance they will bring their positive side.

6. Gratitude: He once took his graduate students to Disney and his colleagues asked, how could you afford that. He said, how could I not. According to him, gratitude is really important.

7. Do not complain just play hard.