Paul Shirley's talk was a lot of fun. He's got a self-deprecating shtick, heavily laden with sarcasm, that makes you think he'd be a fun guy to spend an evening having a conversation with. Since the talk was part of the Globalization series (actually a mechanical engineering course, but everything's open to the public), he tried to make a few points about how students should respond to that, namely:
1. Don't try to predict change; it's unpredictable by its very nature. (he recommended The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb.)
2. Don't specialize yourself too much, as tempting as it is as an engineer.
3. Pay attention to the world around you. Go visit it.
He also had some life lessons to impart learned from sports and the business of sports, about how to deal with stress and failure, mainly having the right attitude so that you don't compromise your own success, as well as living in the moment. He also recommended writing as a way to handle failure. But the main thing I got out of it was the anecdotes, pretty hilarious on their own but made funnier by his style (if you like it; there were a few times when Chris, my old roommate, and I were the only ones laughing out loud. I think some of the students were afraid to be amused by a classroom speaker.) If you missed it, there's supposed to be a podcast, but it looks like they haven't updated that feed since spring. Check back with www.lectures.iastate.edu/podcasts/ in a week or two. I'd totally recommend his book, and he was classy enough to stick around signing them afterwards; I'm sure he'll be back in Central Iowa to sign books at some point in the future.
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