Randy Pausch Essay

“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.

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.

1. In the novel, The Last Lecture, the main character Randy Pausch explains how he is able to change or grow depending on the situation in his life. He says “We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand.” What he means by this is that a negative situation can be reversed into something positive depending on how you look at it. He also says “The brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. Because the brick walls are there to stop the people who don’t want it badly enough. They’re there to stop the other people.” This quote means that you will face many challenges in your life, but if you want something bad enough you can get it. A third quote that shows how Randy Pausch is able to grow or change is “If I work hard enough, there will be things I can do tomorrow that I can’t do today.” This quote shows that if you try as hard as you can for something, it can be done.

I worked just as hard, yet my test results were notably underwhelming in comparison to my ‘top 10’ classmates. What was different about me, I thought every night before I fell asleep. Then I realized, I was alone in my cherishment of extracurricular activities. While my classmates were up late Friday nights studying, I was cheering on the sidelines, exerting myself to pep up the crowd via backflips. When others were reading ahead, I was helping to feed outlying communities. While the ‘top 10’ was still cramming, I was at a Wednesday worship program. I’m committed to giving my complete impetus to everything I take part in, and sometimes, your best isn’t enough for what you want and there is almost nothing you can do about it. This taught me that in order to be truly fulfilled, you need to accept failure as part of your life and learn to move on. Thinking about it, I would not be happier if I quit doing the things I love to study more so that I could be in the ‘top 10’. In fact, I would most definitely be more miserable. Learning to accept failure, I have decided to cultivate my energy into simply giving my all and to welcome whatever rank, or not, I receive with open

My Junior Year of high school just recently started. I have learned so many different things while attending high school, and still have over a year to learn even more. As Matthew Kelly said, “whether you are sixteen or sixty, the rest of your life is ahead of you. You cannot change one moment of your past, but you can change your whole future.” This means while I have done a lot in my past, I cannot change anything that has already happened, but I am able to change my future. One of the most important things that I am involved in right now is school. My first two years at CBHS were good, and I made decent grades. Some of the grades that I made I am not very happy with now but I cannot change that so I need to focus on my grades right now because those are the ones I can change.

Great advice can change a life forever. In the speech “Randy Pausch’s Last Lecture: Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams” by Randy Pausch, his good advice can change someone's life for the better and can have a positive impact on life. Pausch talks about his life and the struggles he faced throughout his life. He talks about the hardships of life as well as the remarkable moments worth remembering and the inspirational moments. Great advice can change a life forever.

Randy Pausch being put down with bad news all the time what can you do to bring you up you let go and face reality there is nothing you can do to fix it but hope for the best but even that is not enough to be satisfying in today life but what can you do there not a lot you can do to fix your problem but you can try with the time you have left to be close to your family but with Randy he decided to make a presentation instead of focusing on his family and he wrote a great book telling his live to his kids and the world show how he became to be the man that once had everything he can wish for turn around now has nothing in this world. He now losing everything little by little it’s sad to go down like this when you have kids that will not remember

I couldn’t imagine going through the same situation as Randy Pausch, it’s possibly the hardest thing to hear. With that in mind, I would have to try to make the best out of it; like Paucsh said “You have to decide whether you are a Tigger or Eyeore. With strength and pain I would try my best to always be the fun-loving Tigger in my last moments. My decision would be to spend my last moments doing what I love with the people who are closest to me. The memories that you make will over power having all the materialistic things in the world.

4. The title of the book The Last Lecture is pretty self-explanatory. Randy Pausch, the author of the novel, has been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, which is to kill him in a short amount of time. The title “The Last Lecture” simply stands for the last lecture he gave at Carnegie Melon University. Pausch says, “The obvious part is being with, and taking care of, my family. While I still can, I embrace every moment with them, and do the logistical things necessary to ease their path into a life without me. The less obvious part is how to teach my children what I would have taught them over the next twenty years. They are too young now to have those conversations. All parents want to teach their children right from wrong, what we think is important, and how to deal with the challenges life will

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.

What would you do if you found out that you had pancreatic cancer and only had three to six months of good health left? In“The Last Lecture” by Randy Pausch he embraces what cards he was handed to with in his life. That is why this novel is inspiring. I believe that it is an inspiration, because Pausch persevered through hard times, he never gave up his childhood dreams, and he always tried to be the best person that he could be. Pausch was put through a lot throughout his life, a lot of ups and downs.

C.S. Lewis says that people read to know they are not alone. There are many ways to interpret this and many books that can be used with each interpretation. One interpretation could be that people read when they are going through a tough situation. A book that could be matched with this interpretation is The Last Lecture, By Randy Pausch. People can all have different interpretations of this quote, but each has a book that can relate to it.

did not keep him down, but gave him the desire to make use of his

The Last Lecture began as a good-bye speech, made by Randy Pausch, a 47 year old professor diagnosed with terminal cancer. His speech at Carnegie Melon University became an Internet phenomenon. It has also been published as a book. I really thoroughly enjoyed his Last Lecture speech. He had a lot of good talking points and brought up some new perspectives, or ways of looking at life situations that got me thinking. He talked a lot about his dreams when he was a child and was very humorous and inspirational throughout his speech. He also had a lot of quotes that I really enjoyed and they are what I want to focus on.