Live Like You Were Dying

In his mega-million selling country hit, Live Like You Were Dying, Tim McGraw sang, "I was in my early forties with a lot of life before me when a moment came that stopped me on a dime. I spent most of the next days looking at the x-rays, talking 'bout the options and talking 'bout sweet time. I asked him when it sank in that this might really be the real end, how's it hit you when you get that kinda news? Man what'd you do?"

Instead of skydiving, Rocky Mountain climbing or going 2.7 seconds on a bull named Fu Manchu, Carnegie Mellon University Professor Randy Pausch accepted an invitation to give the first in a series of lectures asking speakers to assume that they are giving their last lecture. The not-so-funny coincidence is that Professor Pausch is dying of pancreatic cancer and has 3-6 months of good health left. So it was perhaps easier than most, for Pausch to get into the intended mind frame of the lecture series.

Armed with his power point presentation, props and a powerful sense of humor, you'd never have known that this vibrant, 47 year-old Professor and founder of the Entertainment Technology Center (ETC), was terminally ill. As the handsome professor took the podium on September 18, 2007, to a standing ovation, Pausch motioned the audience to be seated and said, "Make me earn it."

"If I don't seem as depressed or morose as I should be, sorry to disappoint you," said Professor Pausch. With that he spoke briefly about his illness, introducing the elephant in the room, as he put it. He dropped and did a few push-ups to demonstrate that, despite his illness, he was as he told the audience, "in better shape than most of you."

Professor Pausch confessed one death bed conversion -- he had just bought a MacIntosh. He proceeded to give his talk called, "Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams." His childhood dreams were pretty simple: He wanted to experience zero gravity; play in the NFL; author an article in World Book Encyclopedia; be Captain Kirk; be the guy who wins the stuffed animals at the fair and be an Imagineer at Disney.