The Last Lecture

by Randy Pausch

Chapter 12 - The Park Is Open Until 8

time, she never painted over the room, even decades after I’d moved out. In fact, over time, my bedroom became

Getting to Zero G

IT’S IMPORTANT to have specific dreams. When I was in grade school, a lot of kids

I didn’t really want the whole astronaut gig. I just wanted the floating. Turns out that NASA has a plane it uses to help astronauts acclimate to zero gravity. Everyone calls it “the Vomit Comet,” even though NASA refers to

and it was a winner. We were invited to Johnson Space Center in Houston to ride the plane.

very clear that under no circumstances could faculty advisors fly with their students.

us. Fundamentals, fundamentals, fundamentals. As

and letting them have a look. Their dad made it.

spent part of my childhood dreaming of being Captain James T. Kirk, commander of the Starship Enterprise. I didn’t see myself as Captain Pausch. I imagined a world where I actually got to be Captain Kirk.

what was Kirk’s skill set? Why did he get to climb on board the Enterprise and run it? The answer: There is this skill set called “leadership.”

looked good in what he wore to work. He never professed to have skills greater than his subordinates. He acknowledged that they

I was

line from the Star Trek movie The Wrath of

IN 1969,

when I was eight years old, my family went on a cross-country trip to see Disneyland. It

All he was wanting to do was

can’t wait to make stuff like this!” Two decades later,

reason. They’re not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. Fast-forward to 1995.

University of Virginia,

Jon Snoddy.

Before going to see him, I did eighty hours

of homework.

Here I was, the grown-up version of that wide-eyed eight-year-old at Disneyland. I had finally arrived. I was an Imagineer.

when I first felt slight, unexplained pain in my upper abdomen. Later, jaundice set in, and my doctors suspected I had hepatitis. That turned out to be wishful thinking. CT scans revealed

It is all about learning his illness.

news was. Pancreatic cancer has the highest mortality

I approached my treatment like I approach so many things, as a scientist.

“Let’s be clear. My goal is to be alive and on your brochure in ten years.”

Through the 1970s, the surgery itself was killing up to 25 percent of patients who underwent it. By the year 2000, the risk of dying from it was under 5 percent if done by experienced specialists. Still, I knew I was in for a brutal time, especially since the surgery needed to be followed by an extremely toxic regimen of chemotherapy and radiation.

Dr. Zeh removed not only the tumor, but my gallbladder, a third

I went from 182 to 138 pounds and, by the end, could hardly walk. In January, I went home to Pittsburgh

treated the trip like something of a romantic getaway. We even went to a giant water park

Then, on August 15, 2007, a Wednesday, Jai and I arrived at MD Anderson to go over the results of my latest CT scans with my oncologist, Robert Wolff. We were ushered into an examining room, where a nurse asked a few routine questions. “Any changes in your weight, Randy? Are you still taking the same medications?” Jai took note of the nurse’s happy, singsong voice as she left, how she cheerily said, “OK, the doctor will be in to see you soon,” as she closed the door behind her. The examining room had a computer in it, and I noticed that the nurse hadn’t logged out; my medical records were still up on the screen. I know my way around computers, of course, but this required no hacking at all. My whole chart was right there. “Shall we have a look-see?” I said to Jai. I felt no qualms at all about what I was about to do. After all, these were my records. I clicked around and found my blood-work report. There were 30 obscure blood values, but I knew the one