The Last Lecture

by Randy Pausch

I always liked the story of Pandora’s box, so Tammy and I painted our version of it. Pandora, from Greek mythology, was given a box with all the world’s evils in it. She disobeyed orders not to open it. When the lid came off, evil spread throughout the world. I was always drawn to the story’s optimistic ending: Left at the bottom of the box was “hope.” So inside my Pandora’s box, I wrote the word “Hope.”

Tenacity is a virtue, but it’s not always crucial for everyone to observe how hard you work at something.

IT IS an accepted cliché in education that the number one goal of teachers should be to help students learn how to learn. I always saw the value in that, sure. But in my mind, a better number one goal was this: I wanted to help students learn how to judge themselves. Did they recognize their true abilities? Did they have a sense of their own flaws? Were they realistic about how others viewed them? In the end, educators best serve students by helping them be more self-reflective. The only way any of us can improve—as Coach Graham taught me—is if we develop a real ability to assess ourselves. If we can’t accurately do that, how can we tell if we’re getting better or worse?

He remembers me telling him: “I know you’re smart. But everyone here is smart. Smart isn’t enough. The kind of people I want on my research team are those who will help everyone else feel happy to be here.”

From the time we started Alice in the early 1990s, I’ve loved that it teaches computer programming by use of the head fake. Remember the head fake? That’s when you teach somebody something by having them think they’re learning something else. So students think they’re using Alice to make movies or create video games. The head fake is that they’re actually learning how to become computer programmers.

Whether you think you can or can’t, you’re right.

The person who knows only success can be more oblivious to all the pitfalls.

Experience is what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted. And experience is often the most valuable thing you have to offer.

SHOWING GRATITUDE is one of the simplest yet most powerful things humans can do for each other. And despite my love of efficiency, I think that thank-you notes are best done the old-fashioned way, with pen and paper.

I often think of the worst-case scenario. I call it “The Eaten By Wolves Factor.”

I used to say that my crayon box had only two colors in it: black and white. I guess that’s why I love computer science, because most everything is true or false.

At my last lecture, I had brought along several hundred of them. I wanted everyone to get one when they walked into the lecture hall, but in the confusion, I forgot to have the folks at the door pass them out. Too bad. My plan was this: As I spoke about childhood dreams, I’d ask everyone to close their eyes and rub their crayons in their fingers—to feel the texture, the paper, the wax. Then I’d have them bring their crayons up to their noses and take a good long whiff. Smelling a crayon takes you right back to childhood, doesn’t it? I once saw a colleague do a similar crayon routine with a group of people, and it had inspired me. In fact, since then, I’ve often carried a crayon in my shirt pocket. When I need to go back in time, I put it under my nose and I take another hit.

Sometimes, all you have to do is ask, and it can lead to all your dreams coming true.