The last lecture by Randy Pausch

in my place…though the lesson didn’t completely sink in.
    By the time I got to Brown University, I had certain abilities and people knew I knew it. My good friend Scott Sherman, whom I met freshman year, now recalls me as “having a total lack of tact, and being universally acclaimed as the person quickest to offend someone he had just met.”
    I usually didn’t notice how I was coming off, in part because things seemed to be working out and I was succeeding academically. Andy van Dam, the school’s legendary computer science professor, made me his teaching assistant. “Andy van Demand,” as he was known, liked me. I was impassioned about so many things—a good trait. But like many people, I had strengths that were also flaws. In Andy’s view, I was self-possessed to a fault, I was way too brash and I was an inflexible contrarian, always spouting opinions.
    One day Andy took me for a walk. He put his arm around my shoulders and said, “Randy, it’s such a shame that people perceive you as being so arrogant, because it’s going to limit what you’re going to be able to accomplish in life.”
    Looking back, his wording was so perfect. He was actually saying, “Randy, you’re being a jerk.” But he said it in a way that made me open to his criticisms, to listening to my hero telling me something I needed to hear. There is an old expression, “a Dutch uncle,” which refers to a person who gives you honest feedback. Few people bother doing that nowadays, so the expression has started to feel outdated, even obscure. (And the best part is that Andy really is Dutch.)
    Ever since my last lecture began spreading on the Internet, more than a few friends have been ribbing me about it, calling me “St. Randy.” It’s their way of reminding me that there were times I’ve been described in other, more colorful, ways.
    But I like to think that my flaws are in the social, rather than in the moral category. And I’ve been lucky enough to benefit over the years from people like Andy, who have cared enough to tell me the tough-love things that I needed to hear.

15
Pouring Soda in the Backseat
    F OR A long time, a big part of my identity was “bachelor uncle.” In my twenties and thirties I had no kids, and my sister’s two children, Chris and Laura, became the objects of my affection. I reveled in being Uncle Randy, the guy who showed up in their lives every month or so to help them look at their world from strange new angles.
    It wasn’t that I spoiled them. I just tried to impart my perspective on life. Sometimes that drove my sister crazy.
    Once, about a dozen years ago, when Chris was seven years old and Laura was nine, I picked them up in my brand-new Volkswagen Cabrio convertible. “Be careful in Uncle Randy’s new car,” my sister told them. “Wipe your feet before you get in it. Don’t mess anything up. Don’t get it dirty.”
    I listened to her, and thought, as only a bachelor uncle can: “That’s just the sort of admonition that sets kids up for failure. Of course they’d eventually get my car dirty. Kids can’t help it.” So I made things easy. While my sister was outlining the rules, I slowly and deliberately opened a can of soda, turned it over, and poured it on the cloth seats in the back of the convertible. My message: People are more important than things. A car, even a pristine gem like my new convertible, was just a thing.
    As I poured out that Coke, I watched Chris and Laura, mouths open, eyes widening. Here was crazy Uncle Randy completely rejecting adult rules.
    I ended up being so glad I’d spilled that soda. Because later in the weekend, little Chris got the flu and threw up all over the backseat. He didn’t feel guilty. He was relieved; he had already watched me christen the car. He knew it would be OK.
    Whenever the kids were with me, we had just two rules:
1) No whining.
2) Whatever we do together, don’t tell Mom.
    Not telling Mom made everything we did into a pirate