Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams - Speech

Speech

"Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams" was given on September 18, 2007 at Carnegie Mellon University's McConomy Auditorium. Over 450 Carnegie Mellon students, staff members, and friends of Pausch attended the lecture, leaving only standing room as this was more than the auditorium could hold. Pausch later commented about this in an interview, saying "A couple of hundred people in a room, looking and listening and laughing and applauding – hopefully at the appropriate times – that gives a lot of validation to my kids that a lot of people believe in this, and a lot of people who knew me believe that I did my best to try to live this way." The first introduction of the speech as well as the series of lectures was given by Indira Nair, the Vice Provost for Education at Carnegie Mellon. Nair first explained the aforementioned lecture series at the university called Journeys, in which eight more professors from Carnegie Mellon would share their insights on their professional and personal experiences over the years.

Pausch was then introduced by Electronic Arts Vice President of Worldwide Publishing and Marketing, as well as Pausch's former co-worker and close friend, Steve Seabolt. Seabolt began with a joke referring to Electronic Arts, and another joke about a bet he and Pausch had made about how many people would attend the lecture, saying that "...depending upon whose version of the story you hear, he either owes me 20 dollars or his new Volkswagen." Seabolt began the next part of the introduction by talking about Pausch's academic achievements and previous career with the University of Virginia and Electronic Arts. Seabolt concluded his introduction by describing the qualities of Pausch, saying that "Randy’s dedication to making the world a better place is self evident to anyone who has crossed paths with him." He described how his accomplishments had affected others, as well as his wife and three children. Seabolt then turned the speech over to Pausch, who was greeted with a standing ovation.

As Pausch walked into the standing ovation, he tried to stop the applause, get the audience to sit down, and begin the speech by commenting "make me earn it" as some of the members of the audience responded "you did". He then commented on the irony of his "last lecture" in a series that used to be the "last lecture" series, but was renamed "Journeys." He commented: "It's wonderful to be here. What Indira didn’t tell you is that this lecture series used to be called the Last Lecture. If you had one last lecture to give before you died, what would it be? I thought, damn, I finally nailed the venue and they renamed it."

Before beginning part I of the lecture, Pausch explained his story of having pancreatic cancer and only having 3 to 6 months to live, but still made a joke of it by saying that he was still in the best shape of his life (and "better than most of you "), proceeding to do a series of push-ups on stage while still speaking. Pausch also talked about what he would not cover in the lecture, which included his family and children, religion, spirituality, and his terminal cancer or any other cancer.