Last Lessons

Unless you’re a total Internet n00b who has to have your kid explain things like YouTube to you, you have probably seen some iteration of Randy Pausch’s lecture, “Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams.”

For those of you who haven’t seen it, Randy Pausch was a professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University who was invited to participate in Carnegie Mellon’s ongoing “Last Lecture” series, in which top academics are asked to think deeply about what matters to them, and then give a hypothetical “final talk,” with a topic such as “what wisdom would you try to impart to the world if you knew it was your last chance?”

What made Randy’s lecture even more poignant was that, at the time he delivered it, he had just been diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer. As far as he knew at the time, that really was going to be Randy Pausch’s last lecture. The lecture opened with a standing ovation from 400 students and colleagues, in which Randy motioned the crowd to sit back down, saying, “Make me earn it.”

Well, in that lecture and the subsequent personal appearances until his death ten months later, Randy Pausch did earn it.

I’ve long thought that the “Last Lecture” premise was an intriguing one, and one ripe with inspiration for EMS educators. Imagine taking the most respected EMS leaders and educators, and posing to them the question: “If you knew that you had one -just one – lecture left to give before you died, what wisdom would you pass on to your students and colleagues?”

So coming soon to this blog, the “Last Lesson” series. I’ll do the first essay in the next few days, and once a month, I’ll offer this forum to an EMS leader or educator to deliver his or her hypothetical “Last Lesson” to their peers and students in EMS. I’ve already got a couple of well-known names lined up, with hopefully more to come.

Stay tuned to the blog, and I should be ready with the inaugural Last Lesson in the next few days. Should be fun…