The Last Lecture, Page 3

Whatever the plane is called, it’s a sensational piece of machinery. It does parabolic arcs, and at the top of each arc, you get about twenty-five seconds when you experience the rough equivalent of weightlessness. As the plane dives, you feel like you’re on a runaway roller coaster, but you’re suspended, flying around.

  My dream became a possibility when I learned that NASA had a program in which college students could submit proposals for experiments on the plane. In 2001, our team of Carnegie Mellon students proposed a project using virtual reality.

  Being weightless is a sensation hard to fathom when you’ve been an Earthling all your life. In zero gravity, the inner ear, which controls balance, isn’t quite in synch with what your eyes are telling you. Nausea is often the result. Could virtual reality dry-runs on the ground help? That was the question in our proposal, and it was a winner. We were invited to Johnson Space Center in Houston to ride the plane.

  I was probably more excited than any of my students. Floating! But late in the process, I got bad news. NASA made it very clear that under no circumstances could faculty advisors fly with their students.

  I was heartbroken, but I was not deterred. I would find a way around this brick wall. I decided to carefully read all the literature about the program, looking for loopholes. And I found one: NASA, always eager for good publicity, would allow a journalist from the students’ hometown to come along for the ride.

  I called an official at NASA to ask for his fax number. “What are you going to fax us?” he asked. I explained: my resignation as the faculty advisor and my application as the journalist.

  “I’ll be accompanying my students in my new role as a member of the media,” I said.

  And he said, “That’s a little transparent, don’t you think?”

  I just wanted the floating…

  “Sure,” I said, but I also promised him that I’d get information about our experiment onto news Web sites, and send film of our virtual reality efforts to more mainstream journalists. I knew I could pull that off, and it was win-win for everyone. He gave me his fax number.

  As an aside, there’s a lesson here: Have something to bring to the table, because that will make you more welcome.

  My experience in zero G was spectacular (and no, I didn’t throw up, thank you). I did get banged up a bit, though, because at the end of the magical twenty-five seconds, when gravity returns to the plane, it’s actually as if you’ve become twice your weight. You can slam down pretty hard. That’s why we were repeatedly told: “Feet down!” You don’t want to crash land on your neck.

  But I did manage to get on that plane, almost four decades after floating became one of my life goals. It just proves that if you can find an opening, you can probably find a way to float through it.

  7

  I Never Made It to the NFL

  I LOVE FOOTBALL. Tackle football. I started playing when I was nine years old, and football got me through. It helped make me who I am today. And even though I did not reach the National Football League, I sometimes think I got more from pursuing that dream, and not accomplishing it, then I did from many of the ones I did accomplish.

  My romance with football started when my dad dragged me, kicking and screaming, to join a league. I had no desire to be there. I was naturally wimpy, and the smallest kid by far. Fear turned to awe when I met my coach, Jim Graham, a hulking, six-foot-four wall-of-a-guy. He had been a linebacker at Penn State, and was seriously old-school. I mean, really old-school; like he thought the forward pass was a trick play.

  On the first day of practice, we were all scared to death. Plus he hadn’t brought along any footballs. One kid finally spoke up for all of us. “Excuse me, Coach. There are no footballs.”

  And Coach Graham responded, “We don’t need any footballs.”

  There was a silence, while we thought about that…

  “How many men are on the football field at a time?” he asked us.

  Eleven on a team, we answered. So that makes twenty-two.

  “And how many people are touching the football at any given time?”

  One of them.

  “Right!” he said. “So we’re going to work on what those other twenty-one guys are doing.”

  Fundamentals. That was a great gift Coach Graham gave us. Fundamentals, fundamentals, fundamentals. As a college professor, I’ve seen this as one lesson so many kids ignore, always to their detriment: You’ve got to get the fundamentals down, because otherwise the fancy stuff is not going to work.

  Coach Graham used to ride me hard. I remember one practice in particular. “You’re doing it all wrong, Pausch. Go back! Do it again!” I tried to do what he wanted. It wasn’t enough. “You owe me, Pausch! You’re doing push-ups after practice.”

  When I was finally dismissed, one of the assistant coaches came over to reassure me. “Coach Graham rode you pretty hard, didn’t he?” he said.

  I could barely muster a “yeah.”

  “That’s a good thing,” the assistant told me. “When you’re screwing up and nobody says anything to you anymore, that means they’ve given up on you.”

  That lesson has stuck with me my whole life. When you see yourself doing something badly and nobody’s bothering to tell you anymore, that’s a bad place to be. You may not want to hear it, but your critics are often the ones telling you they still love you and care about you, and want to make you better.

  There’s a lot of talk these days about giving children self-esteem. It’s not something you can give; it’s something they have to build. Coach Graham worked in a no-coddling zone. Self-esteem? He knew there was really only one way to teach kids how to develop it: You give them something they can’t do, they work hard until they find they can do it, and you just keep repeating the process.

  When Coach Graham first got hold of me, I was this wimpy kid with no skills, no physical strength, and no conditioning. But he made me realize that if I work hard enough, there will be things I can do tomorrow that I can’t do today. Even now, having just turned forty-seven, I can give you a three-point stance that any NFL lineman would be proud of.

  I realize that, these days, a guy like Coach Graham might get thrown out of a youth sports league. He’d be too tough. Parents would complain.

  I remember one game when our team was playing terribly. At halftime, in our rush for water, we almost knocked over the water bucket. Coach Graham was livid: “Jeez! That’s the most I’ve seen you boys move since this game started!” We were eleven years old, just standing there, afraid he’d pick us up one by one and break us with his bare hands. “Water?” he barked. “You boys want water?” He lifted the bucket and dumped all the water on the ground.

  We watched him walk away and heard him mutter to an assistant coach: “You can give water to the first-string defense. They played OK.”

  Now let me be clear: Coach Graham would never endanger any kid. One reason he worked so hard on conditioning was he knew it reduces injuries. However, it was a chilly day, we’d all had access to water during the first half, and the dash to the water bucket was more about us being a bunch of brats than really needing hydration.

  Even so, if that kind of incident happened today, parents on the sidelines would be pulling out their cell phones to call the league commissioner, or maybe their lawyer.

  It saddens me that many kids today are so coddled. I think back to how I felt during that halftime rant. Yes, I was thirsty. But more than that, I felt humiliated. We had all let down Coach Graham, and he let us know it in a way we’d never forget. He was right. We had shown more energy at the water bucket than we had in the damn game. And getting chewed out by him meant something to us. During the second half, we went back on the field, and gave it our all.

  I haven’t seen Coach Graham since I was a teen, but he just keeps showing up in my head, forcing me to work harder whenever I feel like quitting, forcing me to be better. He gave me a feedback loop for life.

  When we send our kids to play organized sports—football, soccer, swimmin
g, whatever—for most of us, it’s not because we’re desperate for them to learn the intricacies of the sport.

  What we really want them to learn is far more important: teamwork, perseverance, sportsmanship, the value of hard work, an ability to deal with adversity. This kind of indirect learning is what some of us like to call a “head fake.”

  There are two kinds of head fakes. The first is literal. On a football field, a player will move his head one way so you’ll think he’s going in that direction. Then he goes the opposite way. It’s like a magician using misdirection. Coach Graham used to tell us to watch a player’s waist. “Where his belly button goes, his body goes,” he’d say.

  The second kind of head fake is the really important one—the one that teaches people things they don’t realize they’re learning until well into the process. If you’re a head-fake specialist, your hidden objective is to get them to learn something you want them to learn.

  This kind of head-fake learning is absolutely vital. And Coach Graham was the master.

  8

  You’ll Find Me Under “V”

  I LIVE IN the computer age and I love it here! I have long embraced pixels, multi-screen work stations and the information superhighway. I really can picture a paperless world.

  And yet, I grew up in a very different place.

  When I was born in 1960, paper was where great knowledge was recorded. In my house, all through the 1960s and 1970s, our family worshipped the World Book Encyclopedia—the photos, the maps, the flags of different countries, the handy sidebars revealing each state’s population, motto and average elevation.

  I didn’t read every word of every volume of the World Book, but I gave it a shot. I was fascinated by how it all came together. Who wrote that section on the aardvark? How that must have been, to have the World Book editors call and say, “You know aardvarks better than anyone. Would you write an entry for us?” Then there was the Z volume. Who was the person deemed enough of a Zulu expert to create that entry? Was he or she a Zulu?

  My parents were frugal. Unlike many Americans, they would never buy anything for the purposes of impressing other people, or as any kind of luxury for themselves. But they happily bought the World Book, spending a princely sum at the time, because by doing so, they were giving the gift of knowledge to me and my sister. They also ordered the annual companion volumes. Each year, a new volume of breakthroughs and current events would arrive—labeled 1970, 1971, 1972, 1973—and I couldn’t wait to read them. These annual volumes came with stickers, referencing entries in the original, alphabetical World Books. My job was to attach those stickers on the appropriate pages, and I took that responsibility seriously. I was helping to chronicle history and science for anyone who opened those encyclopedias in the future.

  Given how I cherished the World Book, one of my childhood dreams was to be a contributor. But it’s not like you can call World Book headquarters in Chicago and suggest yourself. The World Book has to find you.

  A few years ago, believe it or not, the call finally came.

  It turned out that somehow, my career up to that time had turned me into exactly the sort of expert that World Book felt comfortable badgering. They didn’t think I was the most important virtual reality expert in the world. That person was too busy for them to approach. But me, I was in that midrange level—just respectable enough…but not so famous that I’d turn them down.

  “Would you like to write our new entry on virtual reality?” they asked.

  I couldn’t tell them that I’d been waiting all my life for this call. All I could say was, “Yes, of course!” I wrote the entry. And I included a photo of my student Caitlin Kelleher wearing a virtual reality headset.

  No editor ever questioned what I wrote, but I assume that’s the World Book way. They pick an expert and trust that the expert won’t abuse the privilege.

  I have not bought the latest set of World Books. In fact, having been selected to be an author in the World Book, I now believe that Wikipedia is a perfectly fine source for your information, because I know what the quality control is for real encyclopedias. But sometimes when I’m in a library with the kids, I still can’t resist looking under “V” (“Virtual Reality” by yours truly) and letting them have a look. Their dad made it.

  9

  A Skill Set Called Leadership

  L IKE COUNTLESS American nerds born in 1960, I spent part of my childhood dreaming of being Captain James T. Kirk, commander of the Starship Enterprise. I didn’t see myself as Captain Pausch. I imagined a world where I actually got to be Captain Kirk.

  For ambitious young boys with a scientific bent, there could be no greater role model than James T. Kirk of Star Trek. In fact, I seriously believe that I became a better teacher and colleague—maybe even a better husband—by watching Kirk run the Enterprise.

  Think about it. If you’ve seen the TV show, you know that Kirk was not the smartest guy on the ship. Mr. Spock, his first officer, was the always-logical intellect on board. Dr. McCoy had all the medical knowledge available to mankind in the 2260s. Scotty was the chief engineer, who had the technical know-how to keep that ship running, even when it was under attack by aliens.

  So what was Kirk’s skill set? Why did he get to climb on board the Enterprise and run it?

  The answer: There is this skill set called “leadership.”

  I learned so much by watching this guy in action. He was the distilled essence of the dynamic manager, a guy who knew how to delegate, had the passion to inspire, and looked good in what he wore to work. He never professed to have skills greater than his subordinates. He acknowledged that they knew what they were doing in their domains. But he established the vision, the tone. He was in charge of morale. On top of that, Kirk had the romantic chops to woo women in every galaxy he visited. Picture me at home watching TV, a ten-year-old in glasses. Every time Kirk showed up on the screen he was like a Greek god to me.

  And he had the coolest damn toys! When I was a kid, I thought it was fascinating that he could be on some planet and he had this thing—this Star Trek communicator device—that let him talk to people back on the ship. I now walk around with one in my pocket. Who remembers that it was Kirk who introduced us to the cell phone?

  A few years ago, I got a call (on my communicator device) from a Pittsburgh author named Chip Walter. He was co-writing a book with William Shatner (a.k.a. Kirk) about how scientific breakthroughs first imagined on Star Trek foreshadowed today’s technological advancements. Captain Kirk wanted to visit my virtual reality lab at Carnegie Mellon.

  Granted, my childhood dream was to be Kirk. But I still considered it a dream realized when Shatner showed up. It’s cool to meet your boyhood idol, but it’s almost indescribably cooler when he comes to you to see cool stuff you’re doing in your lab.

  My students and I worked around the clock to build a virtual reality world that resembled the bridge of the Enterprise. When Shatner arrived, we put this bulky “head-mounted display” on him. It had a screen inside, and as he turned his head, he could immerse himself in 360-degree images of his old ship. “Wow, you even have the turbolift doors,” he said. And we had a surprise for him, too: red-alert sirens. Without missing a beat, he barked, “We’re under attack!”

  Shatner stayed for three hours and asked tons of questions. A colleague later said to me: “He just kept asking and asking. He doesn’t seem to get it.”

  But I was hugely impressed. Kirk, I mean, Shatner, was the ultimate example of a man who knew what he didn’t know, was perfectly willing to admit it, and didn’t want to leave until he understood. That’s heroic to me. I wish every grad student had that attitude.

  During my cancer treatment, when I was told that only 4 percent of pancreatic cancer patients live five years, a line from the Star Trek movie The Wrath of Khan came into my head. In the film, Starfleet cadets are faced with a simulated training scenario where, no matter what they do, their entire crew is killed. The film explains that when Kirk was a cadet, he r
eprogrammed the simulation because “he didn’t believe in the no-win scenario.”

  Over the years, some of my sophisticated academic colleagues have turned up their noses at my Star Trek infatuation. But from the start, it has never failed to stand me in good stead.

  After Shatner learned of my diagnosis, he sent me a photo of himself as Kirk. On it he wrote: “I don’t believe in the no-win scenario.”

  10

  Winning Big

  O NE OF my earliest childhood dreams was to be the coolest guy at any amusement park or carnival I visited. I always knew exactly how that kind of coolness was achieved.

  The coolest guy was easy to spot: He was the one walking around with the largest stuffed animal. As a kid, I’d see some guy off in the distance with his head and body mostly hidden by an enormous stuffed animal. It didn’t matter if he was a buffed-up Adonis, or if he was some nerd who couldn’t get his arms around it. If he had the biggest stuffed animal, then he was the coolest guy at the carnival.

  My dad subscribed to the same belief. He felt naked on a Ferris wheel if he didn’t have a huge, newly won bear or ape on his hip. Given the competitiveness in our family, midway games became a battle. Which one of us could capture the largest beast in the Stuffed Animal Kingdom?

  Have you ever walked around a carnival with a giant stuffed animal? Have you ever watched how people look at you and envy you? Have you ever used a stuffed animal to woo a woman? I have…and I married her!

  Giant stuffed animals have played a role in my life from the start. There was that time when I was three years old and my sister was five. We were in a store’s toy department, and my father said he’d buy us any one item if we could agree on it and share it. We looked around and around, and eventually we looked up and saw, on the highest shelf, a giant stuffed rabbit.