Randy Pausch

The first person that immediately came to my mind when I thought about who or what is a creative, innovative genius, was Steve Jobs. But, the more I thought about it, the more obvious of a choice that seemed to be. After giving it more time to marinate in my brain, I decided that Randy Pauch is an even more interesting choice than the creator of Apple and iPods.

            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 left. 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?

            As it turns out, that hour just so happened to be one of the best hours of my life. Randy Pausch summarized big moments of his life and all about the trials he faced throughout it. He talked about his wife and kids and other life events. He discussed his childhood dreams and about living life to its fullest, about living it fearlessly.

 His dream was to pursue a career working for Disney Animation and he reminisced on how he consistently tried to get a job there but failed time and time again. That being said, he never gave up on trying to achieve that dream.

Randy Pausch was creative, genius and innovative in his own way. He was a college professor, which, through practice and experience, led him to being an extremely skilled speaker. Needless to say, his last speech was anything but boring and had creative ties the whole way through. What was so genius and innovative was the way he delivered this speech; it served as so much more than just, well, a speech. It was his last testament of his life and the last lecture he would ever give at Carnegie Mellon. But, even more than that, it was a letter of sorts for his wife and children. Yes, he covered his life story in a little more than an hour, but it served as a remembrance of himself for his children and wife.

The advice to his children about never giving up, setting goals, and not being afraid of failing is one of the most amazing gifts anyone could have left behind.