Category: Quotables

The last lecture

I was forwarded a link recently to a a video clip from an episode of Oprah in which Professor Randy Pausch from Carnegie Mellon University reprized a lecture he did for his students called the last lecture. If you’re not familiar with the last lecture concept, it’s a lecture professors often give to their students at the end of the term as if it were their last lecture ever. The intent is to inspire students and share some life lessons.

We were blessed at the end of the summer to receive a last lecture from Professor James Bond, who was not likely to come back and teach at Seattle University again. It was inspiring on so many levels. (If only we’d known he flunked Property his first year at the beginning of the semester!) For Professor Pausch, however, the lecture was not merely academic; it very well could be his last lecture. Professor Pausch has pancreatic cancer and doctors have given him only a few months to live.

If you have 10 minutes, I recommend watching the lecture. It’s full of wonderful lessons, including my favorite:

A bright future

“I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority.”
E. B. White (1899 - 1985), author of Charlotte’s Web and The Elements of Style.

Karma

Make your own motivational posters

Remember those fun moto-motivational posters I posted a while back? Now you can make your own with Poster Forge - a freeware application for Windows. All you need are a picture, text and border color to create wall-sized posters or images to publish online. The program will also make movie posters and wanted posters.

Quote of the Day

"You can tell me to go to hell all you want, but can you actually dispatch me to hell?”
- Prof. Mahmud