A New Way of Genius

Genius. Innovative. Creative.

The first thing I thought of when I heard those words during last week’s prewrite was Steve Jobs and, at first, that’s what I was going to run with. But, the more I thought about being creative and innovative, and without a doubt genius, Randy Pausch came to mind.

            For those of you who don’t know who Randy Pausch is, I’ll give a quick summary: He was a professor at Carnegie Mellon University that was diagnosed with Pancreatic cancer, and decided to give one last lecture at the university before he died. I was assigned to watch the YouTube video for my English class senior year, and to be honest I didn’t look forward to it. The video is over an hour long. An HOUR. Did I really have time for that?

            Turns out, that hour just so happened to be one of the best hours of my life. Randy Pausch talked about his life and all about the trials he faced throughout it. He talked about his wife and his kids and other life events. His dream was to pursue a career working for Disney Animation and he discussed how he consistently tried to get a job there but failed time and time again. He never gave up, though.

I don’t want to ruin the lecture for anyone that wants to watch it, but I have to talk about the ending. (So, basically, if you want to watch the video, don’t read the rest of this… or read it after.) The most genius thing about this lecture and video is the last 7 or so minutes. Randy Pausch reveals the real reason he decided to write and perform one last lecture at Carnegie Mellon: it served as a sort of last letter, speech and remembrance of him, for his children. I honestly didn’t see it coming and it hit me like a truck. It was one of the most magnificent and unexpected surprises I could have imagined.

Randy Pausch was creative, genius and innovative in his own way. He was an extremely skilled speaker, so his speech was interesting and had creative ties the whole way through. What was so genius and innovative was the way he delivered this speech that serves as so much more than just that. His speech, like I said, was for his children. The whole concept was to talk about Pausch’s own life and his childhood dreams, but I don’t think anyone expected it to serve the purpose it does. The advice to his children about never giving up, setting goals, following your childhood dreams, and not being afraid of failing, is one of the most amazing gifts he could have left them.