I heard about Dr. Randy Pausch and watched his Last Lecture, "Achieving your childhood dreams", months ago. I was touched like the other audience. Live fully. Have fun. We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand. That's what he said. It makes millions to rethink life. I guess, many young people, esp. the graduate students, wish they had a mentor like him who is so generous to share his experience with us and shed light on our lives. Actually there are a few scholars who gave meaningful and inspiring advice to people in their death beds, but they are not as popular as Randy. Because it is not delivered in an enthusiastic way as Randy's. When you are dying, you don't bother to fake it and let your true color show. The sad thing is that experience comes with time and there are no shortcuts to getting it. On July 25, he died of pancreatic cancer.
Today, I watched anther lecture he gave in University of Virginia last year. It's about time management, which I am very bad at. One of the cliches is that "Failing to plan is planning to fail." Somewhere along the way, I stopped planning and do things spontaneously. My execuse was that I am not gonna make a plan because things might change. Randy has good advice such as "Breaking things down into small steps", "Do the ugliest thing first". Well, it's a shame that I lack discipline. I think people know the principles, however they don't know how to execute them. Sometimes you need someone to reassure you that you are doing the right thing. That's why people to go friends, psychiatrists, church, etc. But they can never make a choice for us or do it for us. After all it's up to us.
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