The Last Lecture

The Last Lecture
“Andy, I just gave my students a two-week assignment and they
came back and did stuff that, had I
given them an entire semester to complete it, I would have given them all
A’s. What do I do?”
Andy thought for a minute and said: “OK. Here’s what you do.
Go back into class tomorrow, look them in the eyes and say, ‘Guys, that
was pretty good, but I know you can do better.’”
His answer left me stupefied. But I followed his advice and it
turned out to be exactly right. He was telling me I obviously didn’t
know how high the bar should be, and I’d only do them a disservice by
putting it anywhere.
And the students did keep improving, inspiring me with their
creations. Many projects were just brilliant, ranging from you-are-there
white-water rafting adventures to romantic gondola trips through Venice
to rollerskating ninjas. Some of my students created completely unlikely
existential worlds populated by lovable 3-D creatures they first dreamed
about as kids.
On show-and-tell days, I’d come to class and in the room would be
my fifty students and another fifty people I didn’t recognize—roommates,
friends, parents. I’d never had parents come to class before! And it
snowballed from there. We ended up having such large crowds on
presentation days that we had to move into a large auditorium. It would
be standing room only, with more than four hundred people cheering for
their favorite virtual-reality presentations. Carnegie Mellon’s president,
Jared Cohon, once told me that it felt like an Ohio State pep rally, except
it was about academics.
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