PITTSBURGH -- Carnegie Mellon University professor Dr. Randy Pausch gave his final lecture on Tuesday after learning he has only a few months to live due to pancreatic cancer.

Video of Pausch's standing room-only, farewell lecture was shown Friday morning on ABC's "Good Morning America," and Pausch will be featured as the person of the week on "World News with Charles Gibson."

"I am in really good shape. In fact, I am in better shape than most of you," Pausch joked during the lecture, doing some push-ups and drawing laughs and cheers from students.

He is credited with co-creating Carnegie Mellon's Entertainment Technology Center, a masters degree program so big that it needed its own building on Second Avenue.

The program brings CMU's elite computer science minds together with the university's world-renowned drama and arts department.

Pausch focused his lecture Tuesday on the topic of obtaining childhood dreams.

Pausch recently took his 5-year-old son to Walt Disney World. As his oldest child, the boy will be the only one who may have clear memories of his father.

"I'm sorry I won't be around to raise my kids. It makes me very sad but I can't change that fact, so I did everything I could with the time I have and the time I had to help other people," Pausch said.

Doctors said Pausch has about five tumors in his liver. They give him anywhere from one to five months to live.

"Life is to be lived, and I never met anyone who was pitying themselves or pitying others who was making the best and highest use of their time," he said Friday on "Good Morning America."

Pausch said he is afraid of dying but isn't afraid of death.

"To be cliché, death is a part of life and it's going to happen to all of us. I have the blessing of getting a little bit of advance notice and I am able to optimize my use of time down the home stretch," he said.

---

Related Links:

More Allegheny County News

Watch The Entire Lecture (Google Video)

Get RSS | E-Mail Alerts

---