I hated lectures, and probably the only lectures I didn’t skip were the ones that were presented by the young female lecturers or the ones where it promised clips, or sometimes the full length, of animations and movies.
Or the ones which, if I skipped, would earn me a complimentary visit to the Director’s office for a slow mano-a-mano talk, for you-know-what.
Anyway, in retrospect, the academic misfit that I was, I knew I had the capacity to sit through any lecture thrown at me and absorb, learn as much as possible and then figure out what to do with that new found knowledge.
The only problem was to get me interested in the agenda first, or the speaker.
Gary Vaynerchuck and Jeff Walker are probably two names that would get me interested, sitted, and drooling, so it surprised me that I managed to wade through an hour plus or so into viewing the youtube vid of Prof. Randy Pausch’s aptly called ‘last lecture’.
Prof. Randy who?
Well he’s not a professor for nothing and I’m not sure how famous he is, but perhaps 12million youtube views (and counting) does attest to his calibre, and the quality of his ‘last lecture’, which really was his farewell lecture.
Someone close has been asking me ‘How do you get to be so optimistic everytime?’ and I guess that I finally have a link to show her what it really and truly takes to be cheerful, even when death is staring you in the face in two months time, as was in the case of Prof. Randy Pausch when he gave this ‘last lecture’ of his.
I guess it won’t be that morbid of me to say this, enjoy this youtube video that was actually meant for his kids for the years that he won’t be around, but it’s a truly inspirational one and I hope you’ll gain something out of it.
The best lecture I’ve ever had:
Here are some quotes taken off his lecture for you to nibble on, as I remember them, so :p
“We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand.”
“When you see yourself doing something badly and nobody’s bothering to tell you anymore, it means they’ve given up you.”
“You can’t get there alone. People have to help you and I do believe in karma. I believe in paybacks. You get people to help you by telling the truth. Being earnest.”
“Be prepared. Luck is truly where preparation meets opportunity.”
“Don’t bail. The best of the gold’s at the bottom of barrels of crap.”
And here is my favourite lesson learned from it all…
“Sometime you try so hard and you hit a brick wall. Wham! The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. Because the brick walls are there to stop the people who don’t want it badly enough.”
So have you met your brick wall yet? Perhaps you’ve yet to meet them and when you do, bury them.
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