Setting Goals: Evaluating a Speech by Randy Pausch Answers

Read the sentences from Last Lecture by Randy Pausch.And I assure you I am not in denial. It’s not like I’m not aware of what’s going on.

Read the sentence from Last Lecture by Randy Pausch.All right, so what we’re not talking about today, we are not talking about cancer, because I spent a lot of time talking about that and I’m really not interested.

Read this excerpt from "An Address Delivered to the Oxford School of Science and Art at the Distribution of Prizes."Ladies and Gentlemen,You will not expect me, in complying with the custom which requires your Chairman to address a few words to you before distributing the prizes, to give you instruction about Art or Science. One who was educated, as I was, under the old system, can hardly see without a pang the improvement that has been made in education since his time. In a public school, in my day, you learned nothing of Science, Art, or Music. Having received nothing, I have nothing to give. Fortunately, the only thing of importance to be said this evening can be said without technical knowledge of any kind. The School of Art needs better accommodation.

Which sentence from Last Lecture supports the idea that it's important to have far-reaching goals?

The overall structure of Pausch's Last Lecture supports his purpose of enabling the childhood dreams of others because it allows him to

Read this excerpt from "Three Addresses to Girls at School" by James Maurice Wilson.Now that I have given away the certificates it will be expected that I should make a few remarks on that inexhaustible subject, Education. My remarks will be brief.

Read the excerpt from Last Lecture by Randy Pausch.I am in phenomenally good health right now. . . . In fact, I am in better shape than most of you.

Which excerpt from Last Lecture supports the idea that one can benefit from helping people?

Read the sentences from Last Lecture by Randy Pausch.And if you’re curious about what zero gravity looks like, hopefully the sound will be working here. [slide shows videotape from Randy’s zero gravity experience] There I am. [laughter] You do pay the piper at the bottom. [laugher, as the people in the video crash to the floor of the plane on the video] So, childhood dream number one, check.

If Randy Pausch, the author of Last Lecture, had written a speech explaining the different treatment options for pancreatic cancer patients to consider, which organizational structure would he most likely have used?

Read the excerpt from Last Lecture by Randy Pausch.All right. A simple one, being an author in the World Book Encyclopedia. When I was a kid, we had the World Book Encyclopedia on the shelf. . . . We used to have these things called books. [laughter] And after I had become somewhat of an authority on virtual reality, but not like a really important one, so I was at the level of people the World Book would badger. They called me up and I wrote an article, and this is Caitlin Kelleher [shows slide of Caitlin wearing virtual reality headset manipulating a 3D world], and there’s an article if you go to your local library where they still have copies of the World Book. Look under V for Virtual Reality, and there it is. And all I have to say is that having been selected to be an author in the World Book Encyclopedia, I now believe that Wikipedia is a perfectly fine source for your information because I know what the quality control is for real encyclopedias. They let me in.

Read the excerpt from Last Lecture.There are 50 students drawn from all the different departments of the university. There are randomly chosen teams, four people per team, and they change every project. A project only lasts two weeks, so you do something, you make something, you show something, then I shuffle the teams, you get three new playmates and you do it again. . . .The first assignment, I gave it to them, they came back in two weeks and they just blew me away. I mean the work was so beyond, literally, my imagination, because I had copied the process from Imagineering’s VR lab, but I had no idea what they could or couldn’t do with it as undergraduates, and their tools were weaker, and they came back on the first assignment, and they did something that was so spectacular that I literally didn’t, ten years as a professor and I had no idea what to do next. So I called up my mentor, and I called up Andy Van Dam.

If Randy Pausch, the author of Last Lecture, had written a speech about receiving his cancer diagnosis and how he behaved after the diagnosis, which organizational structure would he most likely have used?

Read the excerpt from The Last Lecture.So I called up my mentor, and I called up Andy Van Dam. And I said, Andy, I just gave a two-week assignment, and they came back and did stuff that if I had given them a whole semester I would have given them all As. Sensei, what do I do? [laughter] And Andy thought for a minute and he said, you go back into class tomorrow and you look them in the eye and you say, "Guys, that was pretty good, but I know you can do better.” [laughter] And that was exactly the right advice. Because what he said was, you obviously don’t know where the bar should be, and you’re only going to do them a disservice by putting it anywhere. And boy was that good advice because they just kept going. . . .