Analysis Of The Last Lecture By Randy Paausch

“Hypothetically, if you knew you were going to die and you had one last lecture, what would you say to your students?” That is how Professor Randy Pausch, from Carnegie Mellon, began his last lecture, a speech entitled “Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams” while in fact he was dying of Pancreatic Cancer. He knew he only had months left to live and put together this last lecture to read to his students. His lecture focuses in on points such as the importance of: making sincere apologies, not whining, being gracious and being humble. To stress his thoughts and views on life and following one’s dreams, Randy Pausch used a great amount of repetition, metaphors, allusion, humor, ethos, and pathos in his last lecture.

In Randy Pausch 's "Last Lecture," Randy discusses how he achieved all of his childhood dreams throughout his life and how he helped others achieve their dreams. Often times, childhood dreams are forgotten due to life stressors, other opportunities and interests that come along and, ultimately, believing that those childhood dreams are unachievable. However, this was not the case for Randy Pausch. Randy created a list of things that he desired to experience throughout his lifetime, and through persistency, acceptance and some modification, he was able to complete his list. Similar to many children 's "being an astronaut" dream, Randy had a couple dreams that seemed impossible. These seemingly impossible dreams on Randy 's list included: "being in zero gravity," "playing in the NFL," and "being Captain Kirk." While Randy never received the opportunity to play football for the NFL, his understanding and lessons learned from his football experiences made up for this shortcoming. Nonetheless, Randy was able to conquer all of his other dreams. With each dream Randy discusses, he explains each "brick wall" he hit along his way and what he did to get around these walls.

You would think a man dying of cancer would not be so happy and willing to spend the last few months of his life giving a lecture. But, Randy Pausch, who has 10 tumors in his liver, does not want people to pity him for having cancer. Rather, he wants to teach people how to follow their childhood dreams. Looking at the seven elements of communication we see how he is so effective in his last lecture.

In the novel, The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch with Jeffrey Zaslow, Pausch recalls painting his bedroom walls after the permission of his parents. If my parents gave me permission to paint my bedroom walls, I would first paint on my favorite quotes on one wall. They could be quotes from my favorite books, movies, or important historical figures. For example, Mahatma Gandhi’s quote, “Be the change you wish to see in the world,” is a quote that I have to remember to follow when I am afraid to become a leader and change what needs to be changed in life. Basically, the quotes would be up on the wall just so I can look at them everyday for inspiration, or when I need them when I hit rock bottom. In addition, I would paint on all the ideas and hobbies

A seminar series titled “The Last Lecture” took place at Carnegie Mellon University. Professors were prompted to deliver lectures as if it was their last, while containing a “message of a lifetime”. Professor Randy Pausch delivered his speech titled “Achieving Your Childhood Dreams” as a part of this seminar on September 18th, 2007, a time in which had just been given life-threatening news. It had recently been estimated by doctors that this was the last three to six months of his life. Instead of speaking as if he was hypothetically dying like his fellow professors, Pausch was in an extremely ironic situation, as for in his case he really was dying, of pancreatic

Walls then shoves him because she is ashamed of the truth. Similarly, in a TED talk about how the worst moments in our life make us who we are, Solomon argues that we often have to forge meaning in traumatic events to enable us to move on. He states that forging meaning “helps us fight for our ultimate freedom.” In addition, he claims that forging meaning is about changing yourself. In the memoir, Walls forges meaning into her traumatic events by stating that “things usually work out in the end” and that if they don’t “that just means you haven’t reached the

At the beginning of this semester, I would never have imagined that a book I was being forced to read for a Dual Credit English course would end up meaning so much to me, or touch me in the way that it did. Reading The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch touched my heart in more ways than just one and opened my mind to many new ideas. In this book, Randy finds out he is dying of cancer, and his whole world is flipped around. He comes to the realization that his time on Earth in finite and coming to a close. Randy became determined to use his last bit of time he had alive on Earth in a positive way and in a way that would leave a positive impact behind for his family, friends, coworkers and everyone in between.

The most inspiring part of Randy Pausch's "Last Lecture" was his attitude. The way he started out by saying he was not their to talk about his cancer or his family and the way he focused on such a basic thought, as childhood dreams and their importance, was highly insightful. Mr. Pausch wasn't dwelling on what he has yet to do, but instead focuses on the dreams he has already achieved. When he spoke of being offered the job as a Disney Imagineer and turning it down, that was a very empowering decision. He had the ability to achieve one of his childhood dreams and chose not to. It shows how we can adapt those childhood dreams to our lives as we grow and become different things throughout our lives.

Reading about about man knowing of his death but still “living like I’m still living” (182). He appears very tranquil in the face of death, and one cannot help but listen to his advice. Because Pausch is a professor he feels trustworthy automatically especially because teachers and professors are seen as mentors. Pausch even mentions one of his professors as a mentor. Pausch is also very fatherly, even when he was not actually a dad he understood that kids would spill in his car, therefore he is very calm, thus people trust his advice. The way he write is a key factor to the book. He is so short and to the point that when he gives advice it sounds so simple that it makes one wonder how they never thought about that before. This type of writing is what makes his advice stick with the reader, it makes the book memorable.

This article by Doug Rohrer and Harold Pashler explains why cramming hours and hours for a test most likely will not help you in the long run. They go into detail about why you should take breaks, which could be multiple days, between studying. This helps with your long term retention. However, is has been proven through their experiments and others’ that overlearning will benefit you in the short run. Overlearning is very common in students, but what we do not take into consideration is that teachers and textbooks promote this overlearning. Rohrer and Pashler explain that perhaps if textbooks such as math textbooks only put a few practice problems from the current chapter and then spread more throughout the entire book, students would

“Another Brick In The Wall Part I” describes that Pink’s father has been shipped off to war. Pink questions his father “Daddy, what else did you leave for me?”; Pink is already feeling the effects of desertion from his father. This initiates the construction of the wall he sets himself up in. This is the initial “brick”; the commencement traumatic event that makes him feel that isolation is all that is out there.

Source C is a primary source. It is an artwork/ cartoon from London between 1817 to 1864 most likely leaning towards the latter. It shows 2 convicts asking a man if they can walk them down an alleyway in order to protect them from people intending to strangle them. It is also possible that this is the convict’s attempt to rob or hurt the man in the centre of the artwork.

Chapter Two of William and co-authors’ book–––– Research Methods–––– particularly focuses on the importance of ethics (pg.34). A combination of intentional diction, imagery and narration coupled with an authoritative tone has been used to handle the key issues in this chapter. Deliberate contrast between the traditional and current perspectives of ethics and its evolution has been employed to explain and emphasize the need for ethical research work. Through these literary devices and style, the authors’ emphasis on ethics despite the fact that it is not enforceable by law is made clear. This excerpt analyzes how these authors have landed their points on ethics home.

Remember when we were in high school and our math teacher would say, "You're going to be using math in the real world someday, this isn't just busy work." well, I do, and I got to say, that they were right. I used to believe that I wouldn't be using anything more than basic math in the real world but now that I have researched it and started working on learning the field I want to go into it; I realized that I was wrong. Even though video game art and computer animation relies mostly on computers to do the math for us, it's still there. The article It’s all in the detail by Rachel Thomas gives us an insight on how Phil Dench’s software uses math to light a rendered model, to flatten a model for animating and texture the model.

The article written by Pyszczynski, Greenberg and Solomon(2000) raised many interesting points, though there are some misinterpretations and misunderstandings of SDT. In the article, they compared SDT with TMT and raised many questions with regard to the omission of self-awareness in SDT, possible conflict between the basic needs in SDT, under-estimation of anxiety in SDT and so on. This article specially aims to respond to how SDT explain dark sides of human nature and the comparison between SDT and TMT.