[applause] pausch: make me earn it. it's a-- man: you did. pausch: it's wonderfulto be here. what indira didn't tell youis that this lecture series used to be called"the last lecture." if you had one last lectureto give before you died, what would it be?
i thought, "damn,i finally nailed the venue, and they renamed it." so, you know, in case there'sanybody who wandered in and doesn't knowthe backstory, my dad always taught me, when there's an elephantin the room, introduce them. if you look at my cat scans, there are approximatelyten tumors in my liver, and the doctors told me
three to six monthsof good health left. that was a month ago,so you can do the math. i have some of the best doctorsin the world. so that is what it is. we can't change it,and we just have to decide how we're going to respondto that. we cannot change the cardswe are dealt, just how we play the hand. if i don't seem as depressedor morose as i should be,
sorry to disappoint you. [laughter] and i assure you,i am not in denial. it's not like i'm not awareof what's going on. my family, my three kids,my wife, we just decamped. we bought a lovely housein chesapeake, virginia, near norfolk,and we're doing that because that's a better place for the family to be,down the road.
and the other thing is i am in phenomenally good healthright now. i mean, it's the greatest thing of cognitive dissonanceyou will ever see is the fact that i amin really good shape. in fact, i'm in better shapethan most of you. so anybody who wants to cryor pity me can come downand do a few of those, and then you may pity me.
all right, so what we'renot talking about today, we're not talking about cancer, because i spent a lot of timetalking about that, and i'm really not interested. if you have any herbalsupplements or remedies, please stay away from me. and we're not goingto talk about things that are even more important than achievingyour childhood dreams.
we're not going to talkabout my wife. we're not talking about my kids,because i'm good, but i'm not good enough to talk about thatwithout tearing up. so we're just going to take thatoff the table. that's much more important. and we're not going to talkabout spirituality and religion. although i will tell youthat i have experienced a deathbed conversion.
i just bought a macintosh. now, i knew i'd get 9%of the audience with that. all right, so what is today'stalk about then? it's about my childhood dreamsand how i have achieved them-- i've been very fortunatethat way-- how i believe i've been ableto enable the dreams-- i've been able to enablethe dreams of others, and to some degree,lessons learned-- i'm a professor;
there should besome lessons learned-- and how you can use the stuffyou hear today to achieve your dreamsor enable the dreams of others. and as you get older,you may find that enabling the dreamsof others thing is even more fun. so what weremy childhood dreams? well, you know, i hada really good childhood, i mean, no kidding around.
i was going back throughthe family archives, and whatwas really amazing was, i couldn't find any picturesof me as a kid where i wasn't smiling,all right? and that was justa very gratifying thing. there was our dog, right? aw, thank you. and there i actuallyhave a picture of me dreaming. and i did a lot of that.
you know, there was a lotof "wake ups," you know? and it was an easy timeto dream. i was born in 1960,all right? when you're eightor nine years old and you look at the tv setand men are landing on the moon, anything is possible, and that's somethingwe should not lose sight of, is that the inspiration and the permission to dreamis huge.
you may not agreewith this list, but i was there. being in zero gravity, playing in the nationalfootball league, authoring an article inthe "world book" encyclopedia-- i guess you can tellthe nerds early-- being captain kirk. anybody herehave that childhood dream? not at cmu, no. i wanted to becomeone of the guys
who won the big stuffed animalsin the amusement park, and i wanted to bean imagineer with disney. these are not sortedin any particular order, although i thinkthey do get harder, except for maybe the first one. okay so being in zero gravity. now, it's importantto have specific dreams. i did not dream of beingan astronaut, because when i was a little kid,i wore glasses,
and they told me "oh, astronautscan't have glasses." and i was like, "mm, i didn'treally want the whole astronaut gig;i just wanted the floating." so--and as a child-- prototype 0.0. but that didn't work so well,and it turns out that nasa has something calledthe vomit comet that they use to trainthe astronauts, and this thing doesparabolic arcs,
and at the top of each arc, you get about 25 secondswhere you're ballistic and you get about a roughequivalent of weightlessness for about 25 seconds. and there is a programwhere college students can submit proposals, and if they win the competition,they get to fly, and i thoughtthat was really cool, and we had a team,and we put a team together,
and they won,and they got to fly, and i was all excited becausei was going to go with them... and then i hitthe first brick wall, because they made itvery clear that under no circumstanceswere faculty members allowed to flywith the teams. i know.i was heartbroken, right. i was like, "but i workedso hard." and so i read the literaturevery carefully,
and it turns out that nasa-- it's part of their outreachand publicity program, and it turns outthat the students were allowed to bring a local mediajournalist from their hometown. randy pausch, web journalist. it's really easyto get a press pass. so i called up the guys at nasa,and i said, "i need to knowwhere to fax some documents." and they said, "what documentsare you going to fax us?"
i said, "my resignationas the faculty advisor and my applicationas the journalist." and he said, "that's a littletransparent, don't you think?" and i said, "yeah, but ourproject is virtual reality, "and we're going to bring downa whole bunch of vr headsets, "and all the studentsfrom all the teams "are going to experience it "and all those otherreal journalists are going to get to film it."
jim foley's going,"oh, you bastard, yes." and the guy said,"here's the fax number." so--and indeed, we keptour end of the bargain, and that's one of the themesthat you'll hear later on in the talk is have something to bringto the table, right, because that will make youmore welcomed. and if you're curious aboutwhat zero gravity looks like, hopefully the soundwill be working here.
man: it's on. woman: all right,go get 'em, mazi. this is fantastic. it's just amazing. it's nothing like i expected. pausch: there i am. woman: this is awesome. [laughs] you got one, mazi.
that's good. man: got a ball for you, maz. pausch: you do pay the piperat the bottom. so childhood dream number one,check. all right, let's talkabout football. my dream was to playin the national football league, and most of you don't knowthat i actually played--no. no, i did not make itto the national football league, but i probably got morefrom that dream
and not accomplishing it than i got from any of the onesthat i did accomplish. i had a coach. i signed up wheni was nine years old. i was the smallest kidin the league by far, and i had a coach, jim graham,who was 6'4". he had played linebackerat penn state. he was just this hulk of a guy, and he was old school,i mean, really old school.
like, he thought theforward pass was a trick play. and he showed up for practicethe first day, and, you know,he's this big hulking guy. we were all scaredto death of him, and he hadn't broughtany footballs. how are we going to havepractice without any footballs? and one of the other kids said, "excuse me, coach,but there's no football." and coach graham said,"right, how many men
are on a football fieldat a time?" "11 on a team, 22." and coach graham said, "all right, and how many people are touching the footballat any given time?" "one of them." and he said, "right,so we're going to work on what those other 21 guysare doing." and that's a really good story,
because it's all aboutfundamentals, fundamentals, fundamentals, fundamentals. you've got to getthe fundamentals down, because otherwise the fancystuff isn't going to work. and the other jim graham storyi have is, there was one practice where he just rode meall practice. just, "you're doing this wrong.you're doing this wrong. "go back and do it again.you owe me.
you're doing push-upsafter practice." and when it was all over, one of the other assistantcoaches came over and said, "yeah, coach graham rode youpretty hard, didn't he?" i said, "yeah." he said, "that's a good thing." he said, "when you'rescrewing up "and nobody's saying anythingto you anymore, that means they gave up."
and that's a lesson that stuckwith me my whole life is that when you see yourselfdoing something badly and nobody's botheringto tell you anymore, that's a very bad place to be. your critics are your onestelling you they still love you and care. after coach graham,i had another coach, coach setliff, and he taught me a lot aboutthe power of enthusiasm.
he did this one thing whereonly for one play at a time, he would put people inat, like, the most horrifically wrongposition for them. like, all the short guyswould become receivers, right? it was just laughable. but we only went infor one play, right? and, boy, the other teamjust never knew what hit 'em, because when you'reonly doing it for one play and you're just not whereyou're supposed to be
and freedom's just another wordfor nothing left to lose, boy, are you goingto clean somebody's clock for that one play. and that kind of enthusiasmwas great, and to this day, i am mostcomfortable on a football field. i mean, it's just oneof those things where, you know, if i'm workinga hard problem, people will see me wanderingthe halls with one of these things,and that's just because,
you know, when you do somethingyoung enough and you train for it, it just becomesa part of you, and i'm very glad that footballwas a part of my life, and if i didn't get the dreamof playing in the nfl, that's okay. i probably got stuffmore valuable, because looking at what'sgoing on in the nfl, i'm not sure those guysare doing so great right now.
okay. and so one of the expressions i learned at electronic arts,which i love, which pertains to this is,"experience is what you get when you didn't getwhat you wanted." and i think that'sabsolutely lovely. and the other thingabout football is, we send our kids outto play football or soccer or swimming or whatever it is,
and it's the first exampleof what i'm going to call a head fakeor indirect learning. we actually don't want our kidsto learn football. i mean, yeah, it's really nice that i have a wonderfulthree-point stance and that i know how to doa chop block and all this kind of stuff. but we send our kidsout to learn much more important things:
teamwork, sportsmanship,perseverance, et cetera, et cetera. and these kindsof head fake learnings are absolutely important, and you should keepyour eye out for them, because they're everywhere. all right, a simple one, being an author inthe "world book" encyclopedia. when i was a kid,
we had the "world book"encyclopedia on the shelf. for the freshmen,this is paper. we used to have these thingscalled books. and after i had become somewhatof an authority on virtual reality,but not, like, a really important one-- so i was at the level of peoplethe "world book" would badger-- they called me up,and i wrote an article, and this is caitlin kelleher.
and there's an article if you goto your local library where they still have copiesof the "world book." look under "v"for virtual reality, and there it is. and all i have to sayis that, having been selectedto be an author in the "world book"encyclopedia, i now believe that wikipediais a perfectly fine source for your information
because i know whatthe quality control is for real encyclopedias. they let me in. all right, next one. at a certain point,you just realize there are some thingsyou are not going to do, so maybe you just want to standclose to the people. i mean, my god, whata role model for young people. i mean, this is everythingyou want to be,
and what i learnedthat carried me forward in leadership later is that, you know, he wasn't the smartestguy on the ship. i mean, spock was pretty smart, and mccoy was the doctor,and scotty was the engineer, and you sort of go,"and what skill set did he have to get on this damn thingand run it?" and, you know,clearly there is this skill set calledleadership,
and, you know, whether or notyou like the series, there's no doubt that there wasa lot to be learned about how to lead peopleby watching this guy in action, and he just had the coolestdamn toys. i mean, my god, he, you know-- i just thought it wasfascinating as a kid that he had this thingand he could, you know, talk to the shipwith it. [electronic beeping]
i just thoughtthat was just spectacular, and of course now i own one,and it's smaller. so that's kind of cool. so i got to achieve this dream. james t. kirk--his alter egowilliam shatner wrote a book, which i think was actuallya pretty cool book. it was with chip walter, who is a pittsburgh-basedauthor who is quite good, and they wrote a bookon basically
the science of star trek,you know, what has come true, and they went around to thetop places around the country and looked at various things, and they came here to studyour virtual reality setup, and so we builta virtual reality for him. it looks something like that. we put it in,put it to red alert. he was a very good sport.
it's not like he sawthat one coming. and it's really coolto meet your boyhood idol, but it's even coolerwhen he comes to you to see what cool stuffyou're doing in your lab, and that was justa great moment. all right,winning stuffed animals. this may seem mundane to you, but when you're a little kidand you see the big buff guys walking aroundan amusement park
and they've got all thesebig stuffed animals, right? and this is my lovely wife, and i have a lot of picturesof stuffed animals i've won. that's my dad posing with onethat i won. i've won a lot of these animals. there's my dad. he did win that oneto his credit. right, and this was just a big part of my lifeand my family's life,
but, you know,i can hear the cynics. you know, in this ageof digitally manipulated things, maybe those bears really aren'tin the pictures with me, or maybe i paid somebodyfive bucks to take a picture inthe theme park next to the bear. and i said, "how, in this ageof cynicism, can i convince people?" and i said, "i know.i can show them the bears." bring them out.
if you can just put 'emright there. just put them backagainst the wall. woman: it's hard to hear you. pausch: thanks, honey. so here are some bears. we didn't have quite enough roomin the moving truck down to chesapeake, and anybody who would likea little piece of me at the end of this,feel free to come up.
first come, first serve. all right, my next one,being an imagineer. this was the hard one. believe me,getting to zero gravity is easier than becomingan imagineer. when i was a kid,i was eight years old and our family tooka trip cross-country to see disneyland, and if you'veever seen the movie "national lampoon's vacation,"it was a lot like that.
it was a quest. and these are realvintage photographs, and there i am in front of the castle,and there i am-- and for those of youwho are into foreshadowing, this is the alice ride. and i just thought this was justthe coolest environment i had ever been in,and instead of saying, "gee, i wantto experience this," i said,
"i want to make stufflike this." and so i bided my time, and then i graduatedwith my phd from carnegie mellon,thinking that meant me infinitely qualifiedto do anything, and i dashed off my lettersof application to walt disney imagineering, and they sent me some of thedamned nicest go-to-hell letters i have ever gotten.
i mean it was just-- "we have carefully reviewedyour application, "and presently we do not haveany positions available which requireyour particular qualifications." now, think about the fact thatyou're getting this from a place that's famous for guyswho sweep the street. so that was a bit of a setback. but remember, the brick wallsare there for a reason. all right, the brick wallsare not there to keep us out.
the brick walls are thereto give us a chance to show how badlywe want something, because the brick wallsare there to stop the people who don't want itbadly enough. they're there to stopthe other people. all right,fast forward to 1991. we did a system backat the university of virginia called virtual realityon $5 a day, just one of those unbelievablespectacular things.
i was so scared back inthose days as a junior academic. jim foley's here, and i justlove to tell this story. he knew my undergraduateadvisor, andy van dam, and i'm at my first conference,and i'm just scared to death, and this iconin the user interface community walks up to meand just out of nowhere just gives methis huge bear hug, and he says,"that was from andy." and that was when i thought,"okay, maybe i can make it.
all right, you know,maybe i do belong." and a similar story is that this was justthis unbelievable hit because at the time, everybody needed $1/2 millionto do virtual reality, and everybody felt frustrated, and we literallyhacked together a system for about $5,000 in partsand made a working vr system, and people were just like,"oh my god,
this is like , you know, thehewlett-packard garage thing. this is so awesome." and so i'm giving this talk,and the room has just gone wild, and during the q&a,a guy named tom furness, who was one of the big namesin virtual reality at the time, he goes up to the microphone,and he introduces himself. i didn't knowwhat he looked like, but i sure as hellknew the name. and he asked a question,and i was like,
"i'm sorry, did you sayyou're tom furness?" and he said, "yes." i said, "then i would loveto answer your question, but first, will youhave lunch with me tomorrow?" and there's a lotin that little moment. right, there's a lotof humility but also asking a personwhere he can't possibly say no. and so imagineeringa couple of years later was working ona virtual reality project.
this was top secret. they were denying the existenceof a virtual reality attraction after the timethat the publicity department was running the tv commercials. so imagineering reallyhad nailed this one tight. and it wasthe aladdin attraction where you would flya magic carpet, and the head-mounted display,sometimes known as gator vision. and so i had an in.
as soon as the projecthad just-- you know, they started runningthe tv commercials, and i had been asked to briefthe secretary of defense on the state of virtual reality. okay, fred brooksand i had been asked to brief the secretaryof defense, and that gave me an excuse. so i called them up. i called imagineering,and i said,
"look, i'm briefingthe secretary of defense. i'd like some materialson what you have, because it's one of the bestvr systems in the world." and they kind of pushed back. and i said, "look, is allthis patriotism stuff in the parks a farce?" and they're like, "hmm, okay,"but they said, "but the pr department doesn't--this is so new, "the pr department doesn't haveany footage for you,
"so i'm goingto have to connect you straight through to the teamwho did the work." jackpot. so i find myself on the phonewith a guy named jon snoddy who is one of the mostimpressive guys i have ever met, and he was the guyrunning this team, and it's not surprisingthey had done impressive things. and so he sent me some stuff.
we talked briefly. he sent me some stuff,and i said, "hey, i'm going to be outin the area "for a conference shortly. would you like to get togetherand have lunch?" translation: "i'm goingto lie to you "and say that i have an excuseto be in the area "so i don't look too anxious, but i would go to neptuneto have lunch with you."
and so jon said, "sure," and i spent something like80 hours talking with all the vr expertsin the world, saying, "if you had access to this oneunbelievable project, what would you ask?" and then i compiled all of that,and i had to memorize it, which anybody who knows me knowsthat i have no memory at all, because i couldn't go in lookinglike a dweeb with, you know, "hi, question 72."
so i went in, and this was,like, a two-hour lunch, and jon must have thought he was talkingto some phenomenal person, because all i was doingwas channeling fred brooks and ivan sutherlandand andy van dam and people like that,and henry fuchs. so it's pretty easy to be smart when you're parrotingsmart people. and at the end of the lunchwith jon, i sort of,
as we say in the business,made "the ask." and i said, "you know,i have a sabbatical coming up." and he said, "what's that?" the beginningsof the culture clash. and so i talked with himabout the possibility of coming thereand working with him. and he said, "well,that's really good except, "you know,you're in the business "of telling people stuff,
and we're in the businessof keeping secrets." all right, and thenwhat made jon snoddy jon snoddy was he said,"but we'll work it out," which i really loved. the other thing that i learnedfrom jon snoddy-- i could do easilyan hour-long talk just on what have i learnedfrom jon snoddy. one of the things he told mewas that, "wait long enough, and peoplewill surprise and impress you."
he said, "when you're pissed offat somebody "and you're angry at them, "you just haven't given themenough time. "just give thema little more time, and they'll almost alwaysimpress you." and that really stuck with me. i think he's absolutely righton that one. so to make a long story short,we negotiated a legal contract. it was going to be the first--
some people referred to itas the first and last paper ever published by imagineering-- but the deal was i go,i provide my own funding, i go for six months,i work with a project, we publish a paper. and then we meet our villain. i can't be all sweetnessand light, because i have no credibility. somebody's head's going to goon a stick.
turns out that the personwho gets his head on the stick is a dean backat the university of virginia. his name is not important. let's call him dean wormer. and dean wormer has a meetingwith me where i say, "i want to dothis sabbatical thing, "and i've actually gottenthe imagineering guys to let an academic in,"which is insane. i mean, if jon hadn't gone nuts,
this would never have beena possibility. this is a verysecretive organization. and dean wormer looksat the paperwork, and he says, "well, it saysthey're going to own your intellectual property." and i said, "yeah, we got theagreement to publish the paper. "there is no other ip.i don't do patentable stuff." and he says, "yeah,but you might, so deal's off. "just go and get them to changethat little clause there
and then come back to me." i'm like, "excuse me?" and then i said to him, "i want you to understandhow important this is. "if we can't work this out, "i'm going to takean unpaid leave of absence, and i'm just going to go there,and i'm going to do this thing." and he said, "hey, you know, "i might not evenlet you do that.
"i mean, you've got the ipin your head already, "and maybe they're goingto suck it out of you, so that's not goingto fly either." it's very important to knowwhen you're in a pissing match, and it's very important to get out of itas quickly as possible. so i said to him, "well,let's back off on this. do we think this isa good idea at all?" he said, "i have no idea if thisis a good idea, you know."
i was like, "okay, well,we've got common ground there." then i said, "well,is this really your call? isn't this the call ofthe dean of sponsored research if it's an ip issue?" and he said,"yeah, that's true." i said, "but so if he's happy,you're happy?" "yeah, then i'd be fine." pew! like wile e. coyote.
and i find myselfin gene block's office, who is the most fantastic manin the world, and i start talkingto gene block, and i say, "let's start at the high level," since i don't want to haveto back out again. "so let's startat the high level. do you think this isa good idea?" he said, "well, if you're askingme if it's a good idea, "i don't havevery much information.
"all i know is that oneof my star faculty members "is in my office,and he's really excited, so tell me more." here's a lesson for everybodyin administration. they both said the same thing, but think abouthow they said it, right? "i don't know!" "well, i don't havemuch information, "but one of my starfaculty members is here,
and he's all excited,so i want to learn more." they're both ways of sayingi don't know, but, boy, there's a good wayand a bad way. so anyway, we got itall worked out. i went to imagineering,sweetness and light, and all's well that ends well. some brick wallsare made of flesh. so i worked onthe aladdin project. it was absolutely spectacular,i mean, just unbelievable.
here's my nephew christopher. this was the apparatus. you would sit on this sortof motorcycle-type thing, and you would steeryour magic carpet, and you would put onthe head-mounted display. the head-mounted displaywas very interesting. it had two parts, and it wasa very, very clever design. to get throughput through,the only part that touched the guest's headwas this little cap,
and everything elseclicked onto it, all the expensive hardware. so you could replicate the caps because they were basicallyfree to manufacture. this is what i really did is, i was a cap cleanerduring the sabbatical. i loved imagineering. it was just a spectacular place,just spectacular, everything that i had dreamed.
i loved the model shop, people crawling around on thingsthe size of this room that are justbig physical models. it was just an incredible placeto walk around and be inspired. i'm always reminded of wheni went there and people said, "do you think the expectationsare too high?" and i said, "you ever seethe movie "charlieand the chocolate factory"--
"willy wonkaand the chocolate factory" where gene wilder saysto the little boy charlie-- he's about to give himthe chocolate factory. he says, "well, charlie,did anybody ever tell you "the story of the little boy who suddenly got everythinghe ever wanted?" charlie's eyes get like saucers,and he says, "no, what happened to him?" gene wilder says,"he lived happily ever after."
okay, so working onthe aladdin vr, i described it as a once-in-every-five-yearsopportunity, and i stand by that assessment. it forever changed me. it wasn't just that itwas good work and i got to be a part of it, but it got me into the placeof working with real people and real hciuser interface issues.
most hci people live in thisfantasy world of white collar laborerswith phds and master's degrees. you know, until you gotice cream spilled on you, you're not doing field work,all right? and more than anything else,from jon snoddy i learned how to put artistsand engineers together, and that's been the real legacy. we published a paper, just a nice academiccultural scandal.
when we wrote the paper,the guys at imagineering said, "well, let's doa nice big picture like you would in a magazine." and the siggraph committee,which accepted the paper, it was like this big scandal. "are they allowed to do that?" there was no rule. so we published the paper,and amazingly, since then, there's a traditionof siggraph papers
having color figureson the first page. so i've changed the worldin a small way. and then at the endof my six months, they came to me,and they said, "you want to do it for real?you can stay." and i said, "no." one of the only times in my lifei have surprised my father. he was like, "you what?" he said, "since you were,you know, all you wanted,
and now that you got it,and you're--huh?" there was a bottle of maaloxin my desk drawer. be careful what you wish for. it was a particularlystressful place. imagineering in generalis actually not so maalox-laden, but the lab i was in--oh, jon left in the middle, and it was a lot likethe soviet union. it was a little diceyfor a while, but it worked out okay,
and if they had said,"stay here or never walkin the building again," i would have done it. i would have walked awayfrom tenure. i would have just done it. but they made it easy on me. they said, "you can haveyour cake and eat it too," and i basically become a day-a-week consultantfor imagineering,
and i did thatfor about ten years, and that's one of the reasons you should allbecome professors, because you can have your cakeand eat it too, okay? i went on and consultedon things like disneyquest. so there wasthe virtual jungle cruise and the best interactiveexperience i think ever done-- and jesse schellgets the credit for this-- pirates of the caribbean,wonderful at disneyquest.
and so those aremy childhood dreams, and, you know,that's pretty good. i felt good about that. so then the question becomes, how can i enablethe childhood dreams of others? and again, boy, am i gladi became a professor. what better placeto enable childhood dreams? maybe working at ea,i don't know. that'd probably bea good close second.
and this started ina very concrete realization that i could do this, because a young mannamed tommy burnette, when i was at the universityof virginia, came to me, was interested in joiningmy research group, and we talked about it,and he said, "oh, and i havea childhood dream." it gets pretty easy to recognizethem when they tell you. and i said, "yes, tommy,what is your childhood dream?"
he said, "i want to work onthe next "star wars" film." now, you got to rememberthe timing on this. where is tommy?tommy is here today. what year would this have been?your sophomore year. woman: right there. man: it was around 1993. pausch: are you breakinganything back there, young man? okay, all right, so in 1993. and i said to tommy,"you know
they're probably not goingto make those next movies." and he said, "no, they are." and tommy worked with mefor a number of years as an undergraduateand then as a staff member, and then when i movedto carnegie mellon, every single member of my team came from virginiato carnegie mellon except for tommy,because he got a better offer, and he did, indeed,work on all
three of those films. and then i said,"well, that's nice, but, you know, one at a timeis kind of inefficient." and people who know me knowthat i'm an efficiency freak. so i said, "can i do thisen masse? can i get people turnedin such a way that they can be turned onto their childhood dreams?" and i created a course,i came to carnegie mellon, and i created a course called"building virtual worlds."
it's a very simple course. how many people here haveever been to any of the shows? okay, so some of you havean idea. for those of you who don't,the course is very simple. there are 50 students drawn from all the differentdepartments of the university. there are randomly chosen-- randomly chosen teams,four people per team, and they change every project.
a project only lasts two weeks,so you do something, you make something,you show something, then i shuffle the teams,you get three new playmates, and you do it again,and it's every two weeks, and so you do five projectsduring the semester. the first yearwe taught this course, it is impossible to describe how much of a tiger by the tailwe had. i was just running the course
because i wanted to seeif we could do it. we had just learned how to dotexture mapping on 3d graphics, and we could make stuffthat looked half decent. but, you know, we were running on really weak computersby current standards. but i said, "i'll give ita try." and at my new university,i made a couple of phone calls, and i said, "i wantto cross-list this course to get all these other people,"and within 24 hours,
it was cross-listedin five departments. i love this university. i mean, it's just--it's the most amazing place. and the kids said, "well,what content do we make?" i said, "hell, i don't know. "you make whatever you want. two rules: no shooting violenceand no pornography." not because i'm opposed to thosein particular, but, you know, that's been donewith vr, right?
and you'd be amazedhow many 19-year-old boys are completely out of ideas whenyou take those off the table. anyway, so i taught the course. the first assignment,i gave it to them, they came back in two weeks,and they just blew me away. i mean, the work was so beyond,literally, my imagination, because i had copied the processfrom imagineering's vr lab, but i had no idea what they could or couldn't dowith it as undergraduates,
and their tools were weaker, and they came backon the first assignment, and they did somethingthat was so spectacular that i literally didn't--ten years as a professor, and i had no ideawhat to do next. so i called up my mentor. i called up andy van dam,and i said, "andy, i just gavea two-week assignment, "and they came backand did stuff
"that if i had given thema whole semester, "i would have given themall "a"s. sensei, what do i do?" and andy thought for a minute,and he said, "you go backinto class tomorrow, "and you look them in the eye,and you say, 'guys, that was pretty good,but i know you can do better.'" and that was exactlythe right advice, because what he said was,
"you obviously don't knowwhere the bar should be, "and you're only goingto do them a disservice by putting it anywhere." and, boy,was that good advice, because they just kept going,and during that semester, it becamethis underground thing. i'd walk into a classwith 50 students in it, and there were 95 peoplein the room, because it was the daywe were showing work,
and people's roommatesand friends and parents-- i'd never had parentscome to class before. it was flatteringand somewhat scary. and so it snowballed, and we hadthis bizarre thing of, "well, we've got to share this." if there's anythingi've been raised to do, it's to share,and i said, "we've got to show thisat the end of the semester. we've got to have a big show."
and we booked this room,mcconomy. i have a lot of good memoriesin this room. and we booked it not becausewe thought we could fill it, but because it had the only a/vsetup that would work, because this was a zoo,computers and everything. and then we filled it,and we more than filled it. we had people standingin the aisle. i will never forget the deanat the time, jim morris, was sitting on the stageright about there.
we had to kind of scoot himout of the way. and the energy in the roomwas like nothing i had ever experienced before,and president cohon, jerry cohon was there,and he sensed the same thing. he later described it as like an ohio state football pep rallyexcept for academics, and he came over, and he askedexactly the right question. he said, "before you start," he said, "i got to know,where are these people from?"
he said, "the audience,what departments are they from?" and we polled them,and it was all the departments, and i felt very good, because i hadjust come to campus. he had just come to campus, and my new boss had seenin a very corporal way that this is the universitythat puts everybody together, and that made me feeljust tremendous. so we didthis campus-wide exhibition.
people performed down here. they're in costume,and we project just like this, and you can seewhat's going on. you can see what they're seeing in the head mount. there's a lot of big props. so there's a guywhite water rafting. this is ben in "e.t." and yes, i did tell themif they didn't do
the shot of the kidsbiking across the moon, i would fail him. that is a true story. and i thoughti'd show you just-- so i thought i'd show youjust one world, and if we can get the lightsdown if that's at all possible. no, okay, that means no. all right. all right,we'll just do our best then.
rabbit: oh, hello there. [giggles] i'm lonely. make me a world. yay! make me some trees. ooh, that's nice. [epic choral music] ooh.
la la-la la la la-la-la la la-la la la-la lala-la la la-la-la this is fun. la all: whee! pausch: now, they're gonnaturn this on its head.
watch closely. the world doesn't wantto go on to the next thingin the show. so she's ready to move on,and it's not. rabbit: what are you doing? you can't end this now. woman: but there are so manyother worlds that have to go. rabbit: but our worldis the best world. hey, hey, hey!
hey, no! no! here i am. woman: we're gonnashut you down. control, alt, delete. rabbit: not control,alt, del-- [screaming] rabbit: he left us. he left us.
my skin. my skin! [screaming and muffled gunshots] we loved you. good-bye! pausch: it wasan unusual course with some of the most brilliant,creative students from all acrossthe campus. it just was a joyto be involved.
and they took the whole stageperformance aspect of this way too seriously. and it became thiscampus phenomenon every year. people would line up for it. it was very flattering, and it gave kidsa sense of excitement of putting on a show for peoplewho were then excited about it, and i think that that'sone of the best things you can give somebody,
the chance to show themwhat it feels like to make other peopleget excited and happy. i mean,that's a tremendous gift. we always triedto involve the audience, whether it was peoplewith glow sticks or batting a beach ball aroundor driving. this is really cool. this technologyactually got used at the "spiderman 3" premierein l.a.
so the audience was controllingsomething on the screen, so that's kind of nice. and i don't have a class picturefrom every year, but i dredged all the onesthat i do have, and all i can say is thatwhat a privilege and an honor it wasto teach that course for something like ten years, and all good thingscome to an end, and i stopped teachingthat course about a year ago.
people always ask mewhat was my favorite moment. i don't know if you could havea favorite moment, but, boy, there is onei'll never forget. this was a world with, i believea roller-skating ninja, and one of the rules was thatwe perform these things live, and they all had to really work, and the momentit stopped working, we went toyour backup videotape, and this was very embarrassing.
so we have this ninja on stage, and he's doingthis roller-skating thing, and the world,it did not crash gently. whoosh. and i come out, and i believeit was steve audia, wasn't it? where is he? okay, where is steve? ah, my man, steve audia.
and talk aboutquick on your feet, all right? i say, "steve, i'm sorry,but your world has crashed, and we're going to goto videotape." and he pulls out his ninja swordand says, "i am dishonored!wha!" and just drops. [laughter and applause] and so i thinkit's very telling that my favorite moment
in ten yearsof this high-technology course was a brilliant ad-lib. and then when the videotapeis done and the lights come up, he's lying there lifeless,and his teammates drag him off. it was reallya fantastic moment. and the coursewas all about bonding. people used to say,you know, "what's going to makefor a good world?" i said, "i can'ttell you beforehand,
"but right beforethey present it, "i can tell youif the world's good "just by the body language. "if they're standingclose to each other, the world is good." and bvwwas a pioneering course. i won't bore youwith all the details, but it wasn't easy to do, and i was given this wheni stepped down from the etc,
and i think it's emblematic. if you're going to do anythingthat's pioneering, you will get those arrowsin the back, and you just haveto put up with it. i mean, everything thatcould go wrong did go wrong, but at the end of the day, a whole lot of peoplehad a whole lot of fun. when you've had something for ten years that you holdso precious,
it's the toughest thingin the world to hand it over, and the only advicei can give you is, find somebody better than youto hand it to, and that's what i did. there was this kidat the vr studio way back when, and you didn'thave to spend very long in jesse schell's orbit to go, "the force is strongin this one."
and one of my greatest-- my two greatest accomplishments,i think, for carnegie mellon were that i got jessica hodginsand jesse schell to come hereand join our faculty, and i was thrilled wheni could hand this over to jesse, and to no one's surprise, he has really taken it upto the next notch, and the course isin more-than-good hands. it's in better hands.
but it was just one course, and then we really took itup a notch, and we created what i would callthe dream fulfillment factory. don marinelli and igot together, and with the university'sblessing and encouragement, we made this thingout of whole cloth that was absolutely insane, should never have been tried. all the sane universities didn'tgo near this kind of stuff,
creating a tremendousopportunistic void. so the entertainmenttechnology center was all about artistsand technologists working in small teamsto make things. it was a two-year professionalmaster's degree, and don and i weretwo kindred spirits. we're very different. anybody who knows us knows that we arevery different people,
and we liked to do thingsin a new way, and the truthof the matter is that we are both a littleuncomfortable in academia. i used to say that i amuncomfortable as an academic because i come from a long lineof people who actually workedfor a living, so... i detect nervous laughter. and i want to stress,carnegie mellon is the only placein the world
that the etccould have happened, by far the only place. okay, this picturewas don's idea, okay? and we like to referto this picture as don marinelli on guitarand randy pausch on keyboards. but we really did play upthe left brain, right brain, and it worked out really wellthat way. don is an intense guy. and don and i shared an office,
and at firstit was a small office. we shared an officefor six years, all right? now, those of you who know donknow he's an intense guy, and, you know,given my current condition, somebody was asking me--this is a terrible joke, but i'm going to use it anyway, because i know donwill forgive me. somebody said,"given your current condition, "have you thought about
whether you're gonna goto heaven or hell?" and i said, "i don't know,but if i'm going to hell, i'm due six yearsfor time served." i kid. sharing an office with don was really like sharingan office with a tornado. there was just so much energy, and you never knewwhich trailer was next, right? but you knew something excitingwas going to happen,
and there was so much energy, and i do believe in givingcredit where credit is due. so in my typically visual way, if don and i were to splitthe success for the etc, he clearly getsthe lion's share of it. he did the lion's shareof the work, okay. he had the lion's shareof the ideas. it was a great teamwork. i think it was a great yinand a yang,
but it was more like "yin"and yang. and he deserves that credit,and i give it to him, because the etcis a wonderful place, and he's now running it,and he's taking it global. we'll talk about thatin a second. describing the etcis really hard, and i finally founda metaphor. telling people about the etc is like describingcirque du soleil
if they've never seen it. sooner or later you're goingto make the mistake. you're going to say,"well, it's like a circus." and then you're draggedinto this conversation about, "oh, how many tigers;how many lions; all right,how many trapeze acts?" and that misses the whole point. so when we say we'rea master's degree, we're really not like
any master's degreeyou've ever seen. here's the curriculum. the curriculum ended uplooking like this. all i want to dois visually communicate to you that you do five projectsin building virtual worlds. then you do three more. all of your time is spentin small teams making stuff, none of thatbook-learning thing. don and i had no patiencefor the book-learning thing.
it's a master's degree. they already spent four yearsdoing book learning. all right, by now they shouldhave read all the books. the keys to success were that carnegie mellongave us the reins, completely gave us the reins. we had no deans to report to. we reported directlyto the provost, which is great,because the provost
is way too busyto watch you carefully. we were given explicit licenseto break the mold. it was all project based. it was intense. it was fun,and we took field trips. every spring semesterin january, we'd take all 50 studentsin the first-year class, and we'd take them outto shops at pixar. we'd take 'em to pixar,industrial light and magic,
and of coursewhen you've got guys like tommy there acting as host,right, it's pretty easy to get entreeto these places. so we did things very,very differently. the kind of projectsstudents would do, we did a lot of what we'd calledu-tainment. we developeda bunch of things with the fire departmentof new york, a network simulatorfor training firefighters,
using video game-ish typetechnology to teach people useful things. that's not bad. companies didthis strange thing. they put in writing, "we promiseto hire your students." i've got the eaand activision ones here. i think there are now,how many, five? drew knows, i bet. so there are fivewritten agreements.
i don't know of any other school that has this kind of writtenagreement with any company, and so that's a real statement. and these aremultiple-year things, so they're agreeingto hire people for summer internshipsthat we have not admitted yet. that's a pretty strong statement about the qualityof the program. and don, as i said, he's now--he's crazy.
i mean that in a wonderfulcomplimentary way. he's doing these thingswhere i'm like, "oh, my god." he's not here tonight,because he's in singapore, because there's going to bean etc campus in singapore. there's already onein australia, and there's going to be onein korea. so this is becominga global phenomenon. so i think thisreally speaks volumes about allthe other universities.
it's really truethat carnegie mellon is the only universitythat can do this. we just have to do itall over the world now. one other big successabout the etc is teaching peopleabout focus-- oh, i hear the nervous laughterfrom the students. i had forgotten the delayedshock therapy effect of these bar charts. when you're takingbuilding virtual worlds,
every two weekswe get peer feedback. we put that allinto a big spreadsheet, and at the end of the semester, you had three teammatesper project, five projects. that's 15 data points. that's statistically valid. and you get a bar charttelling you on a ranking of how easy you areto work with,
where you stack upagainst your peers. boy, that's hard feedbackto ignore. some still managed. but for the most part,people looked at that and went, "wow, i've got to pick it upa notch. "i better start thinking aboutwhat i'm saying to people in these meetings." and that is the best giftan educator can give is to get somebodyto become self-reflective.
so the etc was wonderful, but even the etc and even as donscales it around the globe, it's still very labor intensive,you know. it's not tommyone at a time. it's not a research groupten at a time. it's 50 or 100 at a timeper campus times four campuses. but i wanted somethinginfinitely scalable, all right? scalable to the pointwhere millions or tens of millionsof people
could chase their dreamswith something. and, you know,i guess that kind of a goal really does make methe mad hatter. so alice is a project that we'veworked on for a long, long time. it's a novel wayto teach computer programming. kids make movies and games, the head fake--again,we're back to the head fakes. the best wayto teach somebody something is to have them thinkthey're learning something else.
i've done it my whole career. and the head fake here is thatthey're learning to program, but they just think they'remaking movies and video games. this thinghas already been downloaded well over a million times. there are eight textbooksthat have been written about it. 10% of u.s. collegesare using it now, and it's not the good stuff yet. the good stuff is comingin the next version.
i, like moses, get to seethe promised land, but i won't getto set foot in it, and that's okay,because i can see it, and the vision is clear: millions of kids having funwhile learning something hard. that's pretty cool. i can deal with thatas a legacy. the next version'sgoing to come out in 2008. it's going to be teachingthe java language
if you want them to knowthey're learning java. otherwise they'll just think that they're writingmovie scripts. and we're getting the characters from the best-selling pc gamein history, "the sims." and this is all alreadyworking in the lab, so there's no realtechnological risk. i don't have time to thankand mention everybody in the alice team,
but i just want to say thatdennis cosgrove is going to be building this,has been building this. he is the designer. it's his baby, and forthose of you who are wondering, "well, you know,in some number of months, who should i be emailingabout the alice project," where's wanda dann? oh, there you are. stand up,let them all see you.
everybody say,"hi, wanda." all: hi, wanda. pausch: send her the email. and i'll talk a little bit moreabout caitlin kelleher, but she's graduatedwith her phd and is at washington university, and she's goingto be taking this up a notch and going to middle schoolswith it. so grand vision,and to the extent
that you can live onin something, i will live on in alice. all right, so now the third partof the talk, lessons learned. we've talked about my dreams. we've talked about helping otherpeople enable their dreams. somewhere along the way, there's got to be some aspect of what lets you getto achieve your dreams.
first one is the role ofparents, mentors, and students. i was blessed to have been bornto two incredible people. this is my motheron her 70th birthday. i am back here. i have just been lapped. this is my dad riding a rollercoaster on his 80th birthday, and he points out that,you know, he's not only brave; he's talented, because he did win that big bearthe same day.
my dad was so full of life. anything with himwas an adventure. i don't know what's in that bag,but i know it's cool. my dad dressed upas santa claus, but he also did very,very significant things to help lots of people. this is a dormitory in thailandthat my mom and dad underwrote, and every year, about30 students get to go to school who wouldn't have otherwise.
this is something my wife and i havealso been involved in heavily, and these arethe kind of things that i think everybody oughtto be doing, helping others. but the best storyi have about my dad is-- unfortunatelymy dad passed away a little over a year ago, and when we were goingthrough his things-- he had fought in world war iiin the battle of the bulge--
and when we were goingthrough his things, we found out he had been awardedthe bronze star for valor. my mom didn't know it. in 50 years of marriage,it had just never come up. my mom. mothers are people who love youeven when you pull their hair. and i have twogreat mom stories. when i was here studyingto get my phd and i was taking somethingcalled the theory qualifier,
which i can definitively say is the second worst thingin my life after chemotherapy... and i was complainingto my mother about how hardthis test was and how awful it was,and she just leaned over, and she patted me on the arm,and she said, "we know how you feel, honey,and remember, when your father was your age,he was fighting the germans." after i got my phd,my mother took great relish
in introducing me as,"this is my son. he's a doctor but not the kindwho helps people." these slidesare a little bit dark, but when i was in high school,i decided to paint my bedroom. i'd always wanted a submarineand an elevator. and the great thing about this-- what can i say? and the great thingabout this is, they let me do it,
and they didn'tget upset about it, and it's still there. if you go to my parent's house,it's still there. and anybody who is out therewho is a parent, if your kids want to painttheir bedroom, as a favor to me,let them do it, okay? it'll be okay. don't worry about resale valueon the house. other people who help us besidesour parents: our teachers,
our mentors, our friends,our colleagues. god, what is there to sayabout andy van dam? when i was a freshman at brown,he was on leave, and all i heard aboutwas this andy van dam. he was like a mythical creature,like a centaur, but likea really pissed off centaur, and everybody was, like,really sad that he was gonebut kind of more relaxed, and i found out why,
because i started workingfor andy. i was a teaching assistantfor him as a sophomore, and i was quitean arrogant young man, and i came into some office hours, and of course it was 9:00at night, and andy was thereat office hours, which is your first clue as to what kind of professorhe was. and i come bounding in,and, you know,
i'm just--i'm goingto save the world. there're all these kidswaiting for help, da da, da da, da da,da da. and afterwards, andy literallydutch-uncled--he's dutch, right? he dutch-uncled me, and he put his armaround my shoulders, and we went for a little walk, and he said, "randy,it's such a shame "that people perceive youas so arrogant,
"because it's going to limit what you're going to be ableto accomplish in life." what a hell of a good wayto word "you're being a jerk." right? he doesn't say,"you're a jerk." he says, "people are perceivingyou this way," and he says, "the downside is,it's going to limit what you're goingto be able to accomplish." when i got to know andy better,the beatings became more direct.
i could tell you andy storiesfor a month, but the one i will tell youis that when it came time to start thinkingabout what to do after graduating from brown, it had never occurred to mein a million years to go to graduate school,just out of my imagination. it wasn't the kind of thingpeople from my family did. we got, say,what do you call them? jobs.
and andy said,"no, don't go do that. go get a phd.become a professor." and i said, "why?" and he said, "becauseyou're such a good salesman "that any company who gets you "is going to use youas a salesman, "and you might as wellbe selling something worthwhilelike education." thanks.
andy was my first boss,so to speak. i was lucky enough to havea lot of bosses. that red circle is way off. al is over here. i don't know what the hellhappened there. he's probably watching thison the webcast going, "my god, he's targeting,and he still can't aim!" i don't want to say muchabout the great bosses i've had except that they were great,
and i know a lot of people inthe world have had bad bosses, and i haven't had to endurethat experience, and i'm very gratefulto all of the people that i ever had to report to. they've just been incredible. but it's notjust our bosses. we learn from our students. i think the best head fakeof all time comes from caitlin kelleher--
excuse me,dr. caitlin kelleher-- who just finished up here and is startingat washington university, and she looked at alice when it was an easier wayto learn to program, and she said, "yeah,but why is that fun?" i was like, "well,'cause i'm a compulsive male. "i like to make the little toysoldiers move around by my command,and that's fun."
she's like, "hmm." and she was the one who said, "no, we'll just approach it allas a storytelling activity." and she's done wonderful workshowing that, particularly withmiddle school girls, if you present itas a storytelling activity, they're perfectly willingto learn how to write computer software. so all-time besthead fake award
goes to caitlin kelleher'sdissertation. president cohon,when i told him i was going to do this talk, he said, "please tell themabout having fun, because that's whati remember you for." and i said, "i can do that,but it's kind of like a fish talking about the importanceof water." i mean, i don't knowhow to not have fun. all right, i'm dying,and i'm having fun,
and i'm going to keep having funevery day i have left, because there's no other wayto play it. all right? so my next piece of advice is, you just have to decideif you're a tigger or you're an eeyore. i think i'm clear where i stand on the greattigger-eeyore debate. never lose the childlike wonder.
it's just too important. it's what drives us. help others. denny proffitt knows more abouthelping other people. he's forgotten morethan i'll ever know. he's taught me by examplehow to run a group, how to care about people. m.k. haley--i have a theory that people who comefrom large families
are better people, because they've just hadto learn how to get along. m.k. haley comes from a familywith 20 kids. yeah, unbelievable. and she always says, "it's kindof fun to do the impossible." when i first gotto imagineering, she was one of the peoplewho dressed me down, and she said, "i understand "you've joinedthe aladdin project.
what can you do?" and i said, "well, i'm a tenuredprofessor of computer science." and she said, "well,that's very nice professor boy, "but that's not what i asked. i said, 'what can you do?'" and, you know, i mentionedsort of my working-class roots. we keep what is valuable to us,what we cherish, and i've kept my letterman'sjacket all these years. i used to like wearing itin grad school,
and one of my friends,jessica hodgins would say, "why do you wearthis letterman's jacket?" and i looked around at allthe non-athletic guys around me who were much smarter than me,and i said, "because i can." and so she thoughtthat was a real hoot, so one year she made for methis little raggedy randy doll. he's got a littleletterman's jacket too. that's my all-time favorite. it's the perfect gift forthe egomaniac in your life.
so i've met so manywonderful people along the way. loyalty is a two-way street. there was a young mannamed dennis cosgrove at the university of virginia,and when he was a young man, let's just say things happened, and i found myself talkingto a dean, and the dean-- no, not that dean. and anyway, this deanreally had it in for dennis, and i could neverfigure out why,
because denniswas a fine fellow, but for some reason, this dean really had itin for him. and i ended up basically saying,"no, i vouch for dennis." and the guy says, "you're noteven tenured yet, and you're telling meyou're going to vouch for this sophomore or junioror whatever?" i think he was a juniorat the time. i said, "yeah, i'm goingto vouch for him,
because i believe in him." and the dean said,"and i'm going to remember this when your tenure casecomes up." and i said, "deal." i went back to talk to dennis,and i said, "i would really appreciate you--that would be good." but loyalty is a two-way street. i mean, that was god knowshow many years ago, but that's the samedennis cosgrove
who's carrying alice forward. he's been with meall these years, all right. and, you know,if we only had one person to send ina space probe to meet an alien species,i'm picking dennis. you can't give a talkat carnegie mellon without acknowledgingone very special person, and that would be sharon burks. i joked with her.
i said, "well, look,if you're retiring, it's just not worthliving anymore." sharon is so wonderful,it's beyond description, and for all of us whohave been helped by her, it's just indescribable. i love this picture, because it putsher together with syl, and syl is great, because syl gave the best pieceof advice pound for pound
that i have ever heard, and i think all young ladiesshould hear this. syl said, "it took mea long time, "but i'vefinally figured it out. "when it comes to men that areromantically interested in you, "it's really simple. "just ignore everything they say "and only pay attentionto what they do. it's that simple.it's that easy."
and i thought backto my bachelor days, and i said, "damn." never give up. i didn't getinto brown university. i was on the wait list. i called them up,and they eventually decided that it was gettingreally annoying to have me call every day,so they let me in. at carnegie mellon, i didn'tget into graduate school.
andy had mentored me. he said, "go to graduate school. "you're goingto carnegie mellon. all my good studentsgo to carnegie mellon." and, yeah,you know what's coming. and so he said, "you're goingto go to carnegie mellon, no problem." what he had kind of forgottenwas that the difficulty of getting into the topphd program in the country
had really gone up, and he also didn't knowi was going to tank my gres, because he believed in me, which,based on my board scores, was a really stupid idea, and so i didn'tget into carnegie mellon. no one knows this till today. i'm telling the story. i was declined admissionto carnegie mellon,
and i was a bitof an obnoxious little kid. i went into andy's office, and i dropped the rejectionletter on his desk. and i said, "i just want youto know "what your letterof recommendation goes for at carnegie mellon." and before the letterhad hit his desk, his hand was on the phone,and he said, "i will fix this."
and i said, "no, no, no, "i don't want to do it that way. "that's not the wayi was raised. "you know, maybe some othergraduate schools will see fit to admit me."and he said, "look. carnegie mellon'swhere you're gonna be." he said, "i'll tell you what.i'll make you a deal. go visit the other schools." because i did get intoall the other schools.
he said, "go visitthe other schools, "and if you really don'tfeel comfortable at any of them, then will you let me call nico?"nico being nico habermann. and i said, "okay, deal."i went to the other schools. without naming them by name--berkeley, cornell-- they managed to beso unwelcoming that i found myselfsaying to andy, "you know,i'm going to get a job." and he said, "no, you're not,"
and he picked up the phone,and he talked in dutch. and he hung up the phone,and he said, "nico says if you're serious, be in his officetomorrow morning at 8:00 a.m." and for those of youwho know nico, this is really scary. so i'm innico habermann's office the next morningat 8:00 a.m., and he's talking with me,and frankly,
i don't think he's that keenon this meeting. i don't think he'sthat keen at all. and he says, "randy,why are we here?" and i said,"because andy phoned you?" and i said, "well,since you admitted me, "i have won a fellowship. "the office of naval research, "it's a very prestigiousfellowship. "i've won this fellowship,
and that wasn't in my filewhen i applied." and nico said, "a fellowship,money, we have plenty of money." that was back then. he said, "we have plentyof money. "why do you thinkhaving a fellowship makes any difference to us?" and he looked at me. there are momentsthat change your life, and ten years later,
if you know in retrospectit was one of those moments, you're blessed, but to know it at the moment with nicostaring through your soul... and i said, "i didn't meanto imply "anything about the money. "it's just thatit was an honor. "there were only15 given nationwide, "and i did thinkit was an honor
"that would be somethingthat would be meritorious, and i apologizeif that was presumptuous." and he smiled,and that was good. so how do you get peopleto help 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.
i'll take an earnest personover a hip person every day, because hip is short-term. earnest is long-term. apologize when you screw upand focus on other people, not on yourself. and i thought,how do i possibly make a concrete exampleof that? do we have a concrete example of focusing on somebody elseover there?
could we bring it out? see, yesterdaywas my wife's birthday. if there was ever a timei might be entitled to have the focus on me, it might bethe last lecture. but no, i feel very badly that my wife didn't really geta proper birthday, and i thought it would bevery nice if 500 people-- all singing:happy birthday to you.
pausch: her name is jai. happy birthday, dear jai. happy birthday to you. [cheers and applause] pausch: you gotto blow it out. and now you all havean extra reason to come to the reception. remember, brick walls let usshow our dedication. they are there to separate us
from the peoplewho don't really want to achievetheir childhood dreams. don't bail. the best of the gold is atthe bottom of barrels of crap. what steve didn't tell youwas the big sabbatical at ea. i had been there for 48 hours,and they loved the etc. we were the best. we were the favorites, and then somebody elsepulled me aside and said,
"oh, by the way, "we're about to give $8 millionto usc "to build a programjust like yours. we're hoping you can help themget it off the ground." and then steve came alongand said, "they said what?oh, god." and to quote a famous man,"i will fix this." and he did. steve has beenan incredible partner,
and we havea great relationship, personal and professional, and he has certainlybeen point man on getting a gaming assetto help teach millions of kids, and, you know,that's just incredible. but, you know, it certainlywould have been reasonable for me to leave 48 hoursinto that sabbatical, but it wouldn't have beenthe right thing to do, and when you dothe right thing,
good stuff has a wayof happening. get a feedback loopand listen to it. your feedback loop can be thisdorky spreadsheet thing i did, or it can just be one great man who tells youwhat you need to hear. the hard partis the listening to it. anybody can get chewed out. it's the rare person who says,"oh, my god, you're right," as opposed to, "no wait,the real reason is"--
we've all heard that. when people give you feedback,cherish it and use it. show gratitude. when i got tenure,i took all of my research team down to disneyworld for a week, and one of the other professorsat virginia said, "how can you do that?" i said, "these peoplejust busted their ass "and got me the best jobin the world for life.
how could i not do that?"right? don't complain;just work harder. that's a pictureof jackie robinson. it was in his contractnot to complain, even when the fansspit on him. be good at something;it makes you valuable. work hard. i got tenure a year earlyas steve mentioned. junior faculty membersused to say to me,
"wow, you got tenure early. what's your secret?" i said, "it's pretty simple. "call me any friday nightin my office at 10:00, and i'll tell you." find the best in everybody. one of the thingsthat jon snoddy, as i said, told me is that you might have to waita long time, sometimes years,
but people will show youtheir good side. just keep waiting, no matterhow long it takes. no one is all evil. everybody has a good side. just keep waiting. it will come out. and be prepared. luck is truly where preparationmeets opportunity. so today's talkwas about my childhood dreams,
enabling the dreams of others,and some lessons learned. but did you figure outthe head fake? it's not about howto achieve your dreams. it's about howto lead your life. if you lead your lifethe right way, the karma will take careof itself. the dreams will come to you. have you figured outthe second head fake? the talk's not for you.
it's for my kids. thank you all.good night.
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