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“We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand.”
–Randy Pausch

Some of you may have heard of Randy Pausch before; perhaps his name would sound more familiar to you if I told you he was the Carnegie Mellon Professor known for his famous Last Lecture back in September of 2007. Many professors at Carnegie Mellon had given a speech in the series of lectures the university called “The Last Lecture”, but his was the first real last lecture.

When he was first diagnosed with pancreatic cancer he knew that his chances for survival were slim, and he agreed to give a last lecture at Carnegie Mellon. About a month before he spoke, he had been told that his illness was terminal and that he had 3-6 months left to be healthy. In his book that he co-authored called The Last Lecture, he comments on how the doctors worded that. He compared it with the workers at Disney who are supposed to tell you that “the park is open until 8pm” upon being asked what time Disney closes. As one of his lifelong goals, Pausch had wanted to be an Imagineer at Disney. He tried a few times, to no avail, but he finally was allowed to join the team when they were building a virtual ride that was supposed to simulate the magic carpet in Aladdin and was able to take a sabbatical.

Pausch’s book is all about his childhood dreams. It is co-authored by him and  Jeffrey Zaslow. He wrote the book by having hour long conversations with Zaslow while taking his routine bike ride every day. His wife Jai had wanted him to write a book after he presented the lecture and had joked about writing a manual for the family, but she didn’t want the book writing to take time away from family time. The book is about everything that he wanted his kids to know and what he wanted to teach them about achieving their dreams because at the time they were too young to really remember their dad, let alone lifelong lessons.

The book is a really quick read and is so touching, I highly recommend getting your hands on a copy of it.