Randy Pausch's Last Lecture

When I heard Randy Pausch's story I was shocked. I actually heard about it on Oprah one day when I was passing the television. As a daughter of a woman who had stage 2 ovarian cancer, anytime I hear the word "cancer" I am at immediate attention. I listened to his brief story, and was touched in two minutes. I was astonished that a man to act so unselfishly, and think not of himself and dying but of his family and how they were going to be taken care of. I not only listened and watched Pausch's lecture, but I also read his book. They are not exactly the same because in the book Pausch speaks more about what was going on within him then he did while actually speaking.
One teaching tactic that I learned from Pausch is to push your students. Pausch did not accept anything but the best from his students, and would push them and push them until he got what he thought they were fully capable of doing. I want to be able to do this with my students. The thing about Pausch is that while pushing his students he never came off as negative or hard, he came off as caring.
Another thing that I learned from Pausch came from his book. I learned to not look at numbers or ability, but how far a person may go to just be nice. In his program at MIT Pausch accepted only a certain number of students. There was one girl who was being questioned on her acceptance, and she did not get accepted because she was out of the ordinary smart or she scored high on an entrance exam, she got in because she left a "Thank You" note in her packet for the person who had showed her around campus. To Paush it did not matter about the students grades, she did have great grades already, it mattered to Pausch that the student went out of her way to simply say thank you.
Pausch has an inspiring story, and I am happy that his story lives on even after he is gone. His children have an extraordinary father, and should be proud. Pausch is an inspiration to anyone who has been diagnosed with cancer.