The First Lectures

THE TL;DR: creating an ongoing lecture series is a whole bunch of fun.

The Catalyst

Carnegie Mellon is a bit different from other universities; instead of assigning a current summer reading, in a nod to the late Randy Pausch, every incoming student reads The Last Lecture.

As a backstory, the university used to have a lecture series called "the Last Lectures," where professors would give lectures responding to the prompt: if you could give one last lecture, what would you say? Professors talked about life lessons. Around this time, Randy Pausch was diagnosed with cancer and given an estimate of less than a year to live. He decided to step down from his professorship and spend time with his family. However, he was invited back to give a lecture as part of the series, and he accepted, giving a lecture called "Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams." You can watch his lecture on youtube, but don't watch it unless you have some tissues on hand.

After Dr. Pausch passed, the Last Lecture series ended, and there was a vacuum for campus wide opportunities to engage on meaningful conversations on life reduced. One morning, my freshman year, I thought about all the knowledge I wanted to glean from my mentors on campus. Thus, my decision to start a lecture series was born.

The First Lectures, as we decided to call it, was born of the last lectures, but instead of professors speaking to students, we decided to have outgoing seniors give lectures instead. Students nominated seniors who fit their idea of what "success" meant to them, be it through internships or peace of mind. Over 90 seniors were nominated in the first year of the lecture series for only six open speaking positions. Those nominated were invited to provide an outline of a lecture in response to the prompt, "What did you learn at CMU?" The responses were intensely moving, and the only way my committee could deal with the volume of applications was construct and score lectures based on a rubric. After scoring, we brought the top 15 candidates in to speak, and chose our top six students from there.

The lectures were very successful, with 150-200 people in attendance at each session. Here are a couple of my favorites from that year:

Thomas Constantine Moore is a senior acting major originally from Redmond, Washington. Though his rehearsal schedule makes participation in student groups rather difficult, Thomas has nonetheless filled his academic schedule with as many befuddlingly diverse classes as possible.

Stephen Serrao is a fourth year undergraduate Business Administration student in the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University. He has taken a unique approach in shaping his degree by combining the principles of finance and management consulting with psychology, for the reason of learning about one of the most fundamental considerations in business: people.

The experience was intensely rewarding, but my favorite part of the endeavor was doing the work with people who I cared for. It was difficult being in charge of my own committee of people as a freshman (my friend reminds me to this day that I opened up the first meeting with, "So how do we do this?"), but people were so kind and helpful that I found friends for my lifetime in the process.

The cool part was that the lecture series kept going, even after I left it behind my freshman year. To this day, the student senate runs the lectures every year.

A Cute Epilogue

I was profoundly lucky to be nominated myself to give a first lecture at the end of my freshman year. It was nothing that I imagined I'd say--it was more emotional, honest, and vulnerable than I thought I would or could be. And it was real. My friends, professors, advisors, and mentors were there, all in the same room, and I did my best not to cry. You can watch my own first lecture below.