Lessons from the Last Lecture
When I received an email from the Facebook@NUS module teaching team saying that we should all watch Randy Pausch’s Last Lecture before attending the first week of class, it hit me that I really should write down some lessons learnt from the lecture, having watched it 2 times prior to this. (My 2nd thought was, hey, how come it didn’t occur to me that CS3216 was pretty similar in spirit to the Building Virtual Worlds class?) These are what I jotted down while going through the lecture a 3rd time:
1. Dream Big and Celebrate Brick Walls
If only the world celebrated brick walls more. Innovation and entrepreneurship would have progressed in leaps and bounds through the years, but I guess, that’s what make innovators and entrepreneurs special. My corollary to this would be that if an ecosystem were formed to support one another in our quests to break down brick walls, it would seem so much easier. Glad to see that Singapore is finally moving towards this direction through various initiatives and cool modules like CS3216.
2. Educators should learn from Randy
Good teaching imparts knowledge. Great teaching inspires students to have an inquisitive mind towards topics and facilitate their imagination to pursue greater knowledge themselves. Becoming a model of learning and pursuing excellent for the students is one of the best things a teacher could do for students. For me, this seems key in my quest to help others achieve success.
3. “Wait, and people will surprise and impress you.”
Most, if not all of us will have stories from one part of our lives or another that has someone, come out of nowhere to amaze us with what they can do. And this usually happens on 2 fronts, “evil” people doing good things, and people we have written off showing us greater potential than we expected. Jumping to conclusions, especially when it is about people, creates a glass ceiling in our hearts, which should be shattered so that we leave room for these people to impress us.
Last Comments
While my list of quotes that I wrote down and took from the last lecture far exceeds the above 3, I guess the key lesson is to live life passionately, help everyone else around you succeed, and your own dreams and aspirations will be achieved.
help everyone else around you succeed, and your own dreams and aspirations will be achieved.
This is often called karma.