Our piece, Last Chance, Literally, To Teach Life Lessons, which chronicled the opportunity given a young Carnegie Mellon professor who has terminal cancer to give a final “Last Lecture,” brought many heartfelt notes thanking us for bringing the piece to their attention. It also brought requests for additional information.
Professor Randy Pausch appeared on Good Morning America, and ABC published this piece.
Many people asked to see the complete speech, rather than the excerpt we included in the original story. So we are publishing that below:
And if you would like to buy a DVD of the speech, you can send an e-mail here.
The Wall Street Journal also has been accepting reader comments on the article, and you can read those here.
One of the comments says this:
If it were my last lecture, I would recount the results of a survey that Dr. Tony Campolo mentions. It was one done on 50 people over the age of 95. They were asked ‘If you could do it all over again, what would you do differently?’ Three responses came back more frequently than the rest. The most frequent response by the nanogenarians was that they would ‘reflect more.’ The next most frequent response was that they would ‘risk more.’ And the third — that they would ‘do things that would live beyond them’ or in other words, leave a legacy.
Reflect more. Risk more. Leave a legacy.
Much to be said for that.
