The last lecture Read Online Free PDF

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, swimming, 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