In 2007, professor Randy Pausch presented what he titled “Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams” in the “My Last Lecture” series at his university, Carnegie Mellon. He had been diagnosed with terminal cancer only a month earlier and had only a few more months to live. With amazing optimism and energy, he gave this lecture to focus on what had been most important in his life: his dreams and his satisfying hard work. He wanted to inform and inspire his students and colleagues so they too would continue to dream and work to find joy in life. His inspirational message led many colleges and universities to establish “My Last Lecture” series to give faculty opportunities to follow Pausch’s example and develop a lecture that summed up the best of their academic careers and the most important things they had learned about life.
It is hard to believe that the Columbine High School shooting was 19 years ago. The actions of the two suburban Colorado high school seniors who went on a shooting spree killing 13 people and wounding over 20 others before taking their own lives should have been a clarion call for common sense gun control. Sadly, the nation would hear the same refrain in 2012 in the bucolic Connecticut town of Newtown at the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, where the 20-year-old gunman shot and killed 20 six- and seven-year-old children and six adult staff members before killing himself.
