Sometimes, Jai Pausch says, it's the simplest things that capture people's imaginations.

That's why she's happy there is a brick wall at one end of the walkway that connects the Gates Center for Computer Science and the Purnell Center for the Arts. The walkway is being dedicated tonight at Carnegie Mellon University in honor of her late husband, computer science professor Randy Pausch.

In his phenomenally successful last lecture, Dr. Pausch talked about never giving up on your goals in life, despite obstacles and setbacks. "Brick walls are there for a reason," he said. "And once you get over them -- even if someone has practically had to throw you over -- it can be helpful to others to tell them how you did it."

Dr. Pausch delivered his lecture in September 2007, when he knew he had terminal pancreatic cancer, and it went on to be viewed on the Web by more than 10 million people around the world and to be turned into a best-selling book, "The Last Lecture," co-written with Carnegie Mellon alumnus Jeffrey Zaslow.

The brick wall, which is at one end of the footbridge where it makes a right-angle turn into the Gates Center, "really captures so much of what we go through in life, from the simplest daily things, to not getting the job you want, and then just reminding yourself not to give up -- don't give up on yourself and don't give up on the situation."

It's a lesson she has learned in a whole new way over the last 15 months.

This month, Ms. Pausch, 43, took her first vacation without the three children, going with a friend to Rome and Venice, a city she and her late husband had always talked about visiting.

Venice was "beautiful, really relaxing, but from my perspective it was almost too romantic, with the gondola rides and people dancing to romantic music in the plazas, and it was like -- uh -- I was just trying to tell myself, don't focus on what you don't have. I had to have a couple discussions with myself to get past that."

Her children -- Dylan, 7, Logan, 5, and Chloe, 3 -- are all in school or preschool, and so she now has her mornings free.

"I used to say to myself, if I can just get through the summer, I'll have three hours in the morning -- you know, to watch TV and eat bonbons," she said with a laugh. "It seemed like such a huge amount of time, and now I'm in it and it's wow, that time just goes -- by the time you drop them off and go to the grocery store you have an hour left, and so the reality of doing this on my own has really sunk in."

The boys are both taking Tae Kwan Do classes, which she really likes because "they set goals for them and they let them know what they have to achieve and then they have to demonstrate they are competent in the skills before they are awarded the next rank."

Just as important, she said, is teaching children that it is all right to try and yet fail, which encapsulates the other main theme in the 230-foot pedestrian bridge -- penguins.

When Dr. Pausch set up the Building Virtual Worlds competition at Carnegie Mellon, where student teams created interactive computerized shows, he gave out a "First Penguin Award" for the team that took the biggest risk on a new idea or technology, even if it didn't work.

"The title of the award came from the notion that when penguins are about to jump into water that might contain predators, well, somebody's got to be the first penguin," he wrote.

The footbridge, which was paid for by the university as part of the Gates Center project, is lined with aluminum panels with cutouts of diving penguins and shapes suggesting the birds and water.

The other primary feature being unveiled tonight is a LED light display along the walkway that will run every 15 minutes from dusk to dawn, featuring favorite colors of the Pausch family, including black and gold, blue, green and pink, said lighting co-designer Christopher Popowich.

Mr. Popowich and his business partner, Carnegie Mellon professor Cynthia Limauro, created several displays evoking themes from Dr. Pausch's lecture that will create "movement throughout the piece, so that nothing will ever be static." The university is soliciting small gifts to help pay for the lighting display at www.cmu.edu/give.

The footbridge and a memorial plaque to Dr. Pausch in the Gates Center will be a permanent reminder of his life and goals, and the story they tell will increasingly be for students who never knew him and may never have heard of him.

"I want to say how touched our family is that Carnegie Mellon appreciated and loved Randy so much that they dedicated a bridge at his honor," Ms. Pausch said yesterday.

"If if means that message keeps getting passed on -- to follow your dreams and don't go for the money but go for where your heart is -- that will be so important."

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