The Last Lecture

I watched a Primetime special last night of Diane Sawyer interviewing Randy Pausch, a Professor at Carnegie Mellon, who lost his battle with pancreatic cancer last week. He also wrote a book based called The Last Lecture. This is the blurb from his website.
"On September 18, 2007, computer science professor Randy Pausch stepped in front of an audience of 400 people at Carnegie Mellon University to deliver a last lecture called “Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams.” With slides of his CT scans beaming out to the audience, Randy told his audience about the cancer that is devouring his pancreas and that will claim his life in a matter of months. On the stage that day, Randy was youthful, energetic, handsome, often cheerfully, darkly funny. He seemed invincible. But this was a brief moment, as he himself acknowledged.
Randy’s lecture has become a phenomenon, as has the book he wrote based on the same principles, celebrating the dreams we all strive to make realities. Sadly, Randy lost his battle to pancreatic cancer on July 25th, 2008, but his legacy will continue to inspire us all, for generations to come." www.thelastlecture.com

People ask me what do I want to do when I graduate. The simple answer is that I want to be a professor, one like Randy Pausch, who loved his family above all else, made mistakes along the way, learned from those mistakes and lived life to the fullest. I realize that I am lucky that I love my job and I wake up each day wanting to go to the office and work on my dissertation. It is frustrating at times when situations out of my control seem to be taking over, but I can't worry about that. Since I work in academia, work is school and will be for the rest of my life if I'm lucky. Some days I feel that I don't know what I'm doing at all, I feel stupid. Then yesterday when my students were presenting their papers on different topics, I realized that not only did I already know everything they presented but I had to stop myself from adding a slew of more information. Maybe I'm not stupid after all. Then I watched this interview with Randy Pausch, it gave me hope that one day I will be able to impact student lives the way he did.