the last lecture - randy pausch jeffrey zaslow

[...]... asked "Well, yes What if we hit the train?" He answered honestly We were in the basket of the balloon, and the odds of the basket hitting the train were small However, there was certainly a risk that the giant balloon itself (called "the envelope") would fall onto the tracks when we hit the ground If the speeding train got tangled in the falling envelope, we'd be at the wrong end of a rope, inside... make you better There's a lot of talk these days about giving children self-esteem It's not something you can give; it's something they have to build Coach Graham worked in a no-coddling zone Self-esteem? He knew there was really only one way to teach kids how to develop it: You give them something they can't do, they work hard until they find they can do it, and you just keep repeating the process When... people They were always finding big projects off the beaten path, then throwing themselves into them Together, they underwrote a fifty-student dormitory in rural Thailand, which was designed to help girls remain in school and avoid prostitution My mother was always supremely charitable And my father would have been happy giving everything away and living in a sack cloth instead of in the suburbs, where the. .. in the lecture, I was always pretty adept at charging through the brick walls in my academic and professional life I didn't tell the audience the story about my courtship with my wife because I knew I'd get too emotional Still, the words I said on stage completely applied to my early days with Jai: " The brick walls are there to stop the people who don't want it badly enough They're there to stop the. .. wrote the word "Hope." Jack saw that and couldn't resist writing the word "Bob" over "Hope." When friends visited my room, it always took them a minute to figure out why the word "Bob" was there Then came the inevitable eye-roll Given that it was the late 1970s, I wrote the words "Disco sucks!" over my door My mother thought that was vulgar One day when I wasn't looking, she quietly painted over the. .. in our household as "The Day Jai Managed to Achieve the One-Driver, Two-Car Collision." Our minivan was in the garage and my V olkswagen convertible was in the driveway Jai pulled out the minivan without realizing the other car was in the way The result: an instantaneous crunch, boom, bam! What followed just proves that at times we're all living in an I Love Lucy episode Jai spent the entire day obsessing... summer night, and I had the soundtrack to Disney's The Lion King blasting on my stereo Tears actually began streaming down my face as I drove past the building Here I was, the grown-up version of that wide-eyed eight-year-old at Disneyland I had finally arrived I was an Imagineer III ADVENTURES AND LESSONS LEARNED 12 The Park Is Open Until 8 p.m MY MEDICAL odyssey began in the summer of 2006, when... especially for Jai, who couldn't stop crying But a strong part of me remained in Randy Scientist Mode, collecting facts and quizzing the doctor about options At the same time, there was another part of me that was utterly engaged in the theater of the moment I felt incredibly impressed awed really-by the way Dr Wolff was giving the news to Jai I thought to myself: "Look at how he's doing this He's obviously... Dutch.) Ever since my last lecture began spreading on the Internet, more than a few friends have been ribbing me about it, calling me "St Randy. " It's their way of reminding me that there were times I've been described in other, more colorful, ways But I like to think that my flaws are in the social, rather than in the moral category And I've been lucky enough to benefit over the years from people... and screaming, to join a league I had no desire to be there I was naturally wimpy, and the smallest kid by far Fear turned to awe when I met my coach, Jim Graham, a hulking, six-foot-four wall-of-a- guy He had been a linebacker at Penn State, and was seriously old- school I mean, really old-school; like he thought the forward pass was a trick play On the first day of practice, we were all scared to death . class="bi x0 y0 w1 h0" alt="" The Last Lecture Randy Pausch Professor, Carnegie Mellon with Jeffrey Zaslow Introduction I HAVE AN engineering problem. While for the most part I'm in terrific. it really took to help people. They were always finding big projects off the beaten path, then throwing themselves into them. Together, they underwrote a fifty-student dormitory in rural Thailand,. my room, it always took them a minute to figure out why the word "Bob" was there. Then came the inevitable eye-roll. Given that it was the late 1970s, I wrote the words "Disco sucks!"