Randy+Pausch+-+Pancreatic+Cancer+Patient

Randy Pausch - A real patient that suffered from pancreatic cancer

Randy Pausch

His life: Randy Pausch was an American professor of computer science and human-computer science and worked at the Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He learned that he had pancreatic cancer in September 2006 and died July 25, 2008. He is most famous for his lecture, "The Last Lecture: Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams" on september 18, 2007 at Carnegie Mellon. It became a famous speech, and can be found on youtube. You can watch the long video below. The speech was also made into a book, The Last Lecture, which became a New York Times best-seller.

//__The video below has mild language. Viewer discreation is advised.__// Please watch in 480p. media type="youtube" key="ji5_MqicxSo" height="385" width="480"

Randy Pausch was born in Baltimore, Maryland and grew up in Columbia, Maryland. He graduated from Oakland Mills High School and earned a bachelor's degree in computer science from Brown University. He then earned his Ph.D. in computer science from Carnegie Mellon University, which is where he gave his most famous lecture. Pausch was an assistant and associate professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Virginia. He completed tests at Walt Disney Imagineering and Electronic Arts. He won many awards in achievements in computer education. Cancer: Randy Pausch was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer on September 19, 2006. He underwent a Whipple procedure, which may prevent the cancer from proceding, but it failed. On August 2007, he was told that he only had 3 to 6 months of good health. He and his family moved to Chesapeake, Virginia, to live closer to his wife's family. He was going through chemotherapy, which uses chemicals, but because of side affects, he had to switch to immunotherapy based approaches, which strengthens the immunity to a certain disease. Even his close friend posted on Pausch's webpage that he is getting weak and looked "much sicker than he had been." Sadly, Randy Pausch lost his fight against pancreatic cancer on July 25, 2008, at age 48.

"The Last Lecture" There is a series of lectures given by people suffering from diseases called "the last lecture", and is given when the patient has little time left to live. Randy Pausch gave this lecture series in Carnegie Mellon University. The speech was called __Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams,__ and was of course centered around his childhood dreams. Randy's dreams as a child was: To be in zero gravity. To be a NFL player. Being or meeting Captain Kirk. Winning stuffed animals. Becoming an imagineer for Disney Corporations. Randy Pausch achieved most of these dreams. For being in zero gravity, Pausch participated in a zero gravity simulator, which leaves the people inside a plane in no gravity for approximately 30 seconds. He never became a NFL player, but he learned much from it, like teamwork, responsibility, and the fact that when someone(his coach) is teaching you strictly, it is more fortunate than being completely left alone, because that means they have gave up on you. Pausch met the actor of Captain Kirk, his third dream, and told the audience that the electronics that he has were so amazing, but now, everyone has things even better than those, and that he often thinks how much the world has developed. As a child(and as an adult), Randy Pausch always loved winning stuffed animals, and has a lot of teddybears bigger than himself. He has taken pictures of them with his family too, and looks back at those pictures sometimes. Pausch also achieved his dream of becoming an imagineer for Disney World, because in his lifetime, he has helped with the Walt Disney Foundation. Randy Pausch said many wise things, such as: "Experience is what you get when you didn't get what you wanted." "Brick walls are there for a reason: they let us prove how badly we want things." "Lab researchers can do miraculous things, if they are given the materials to do it."

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