Who is Randy Pausch?

Randolph Frederick “Randy” Pausch was an American professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania. He is the first Carnegie Mellon professor to win the Karl V. Karlstrom Outstanding Education Award. He is a widely respected professor and co-founded the CMU Entertainment Technology Center. He is also the founder of Alice, an educational programming language that is used to teach object-oriented programming language using visual 3D models.

What was he know for?

Randy Pausch is widely known for his last lecture titled “The Last Lecture: Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams”. The recorded version of his lecture was widely shared on social media and viewed by millions of people. He also made an appearance on the Oprah Winfrey Show after his public fame. He later co-authored a book of the same name, which was a New York Times best seller upon release.

5 points that I liked in his talk (quoted mostly from his speech)

• Lots of people (me!) focus on doing things right. However, it’s much more important to do the right things. Even if you do the right things badly, it’s better than doing wrong things beautifully.
• Do the ugliest thing first from the to-do list.
• Identify the block of times that’s empty (gaps between classes) and make up a fake class and make it your work time.
• Some people do better when there’s a time constraint (yes me!). If there’s something that isn’t due for a long time, make a fake deadline and act like it’s real.
• Sometime all you must do is ask (yes again me! I don’t ask). If you don’t know something rather than wasting all the time figuring it out, ask someone that knows.