I saw Randy Pausch's Last Lecture on You Tube, about a year ago. I would strongly recommend for anyone with a teenager in the household to watch this and share it with their teenage child.

I have this bookmarked, and revisit it when I find I'm in need of inspiration. I wish I saw this when I was about twenty years younger. This man and his message has a life-changing force. You and your teenager won't regret spending a few minutes for this inspiring message. The message is subtitled "Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams", and, come to think of it, I would recommend this video to everyone!

Randy Pausch was born in Baltimore, Maryland, on October 23, 1960, and grew up in Columbia, Maryland. He graduated with a Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science from Brown University in May 1982, and received his PhD in computer science from Carnegie Mellon University in August, 1988. While completing his doctoral studies, Dr. Pausch was employed at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center; also Adobe Systems.

Someof Dr. Pausch's achievements in his lifetime are listed as follows:

• Co-founder of Carnegie Mellon's Entertainment Technology Center
• Virtual Reality Research with Disney Imagineers
• Professor of Computer Science at the University of Virginia's School of Engineering
• Virtual Worlds course at Carnegie Mellon, which he constructed and taught for 10 years
• The Alice software project
• National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator
• Lilly Foundation Teaching Fellow
• Karl V. Karlstrom Outstanding Educator Award
• ACM Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education Award for Outstanding Contributions to Computer Science Education

His life and work are filled with honors for his contributions in eduction, computer technology, and virtual reality.

Dr. Pausch was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and underwent many unsuccessful attempts to treat this cancer, including surgical procedures and chemotherapy, prior to the filmed lecture. He had about 10 months to live at the time of this lecture, and had been given an estimate of "three to five months of continuing good health".

Dr. Pausch worked in many important life messages in his final lecture. His talk was modelled after an ongoing series of lectures where top academics are asked, "What wisdom would you try to impart if you knew it was your last chance?"

Randy made one quip, because they had recently renamed this series, "Journeys", instead of the "Last Lecture" series--"I thought I finally nailed this venue and they renamed it!" and received a roar of applause and laughter from the audience.

Dr. Pausch died on July 25, 2008, in a hospice in Chesapeake, Virginia (USA) surrounded by loving family and friends.