The Last Lecture By Randy Pausch Summary

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.

Additionally, it was stipulated in the text book that “[middle aged] adult attitude about death are often irrational. Logically, adults should work hard to change the society” (Berger, 2014, p. 766). According to psychosocial developmental theorist Erikson, Randy achieved his adulthood stage of generativity by working hard. “Adults need to care for the next generation, ether by raising their own children or by mentoring, teaching and helping others” (Berger, 2014, p. 632). Randy accomplished many of his dreams

“Brick walls are there for a reason. They’re not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something.” This was the mantra Randy Pausch lived by in his terminating life. In his book, which I learned the quote from, he talked about many challenges he overcame throughout his life. The largest obstacle I have had to overcome is the challenge of being a part of many extracurricular activities while maintaining above average grades in my rigorous schedule throughout the years.

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

Happiness is something that many people spend their whole lives searching for, but when it comes down to it, is often impossible to truly find. In John Gertner’s essay “The Futile Pursuit of Happiness,” he discusses the findings from the happiness studies done by Daniel Gilbert, Tim Wilson, George Loewenstein, and Daniel Kahneman. The results of the studies suggest that although people can predict who or what will make them happy, they do not know how long it will last or to what degree.

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.

Often times in physical therapy school, when prompted with a research article, blog post or book, I tend to relate it back directly to my future in physical therapy practice. When reading The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch, I felt it would be better suited to write this paper about life as a whole, rather than just one aspect of my own. I initially chose to read this book because my grandmother died of the same cause that Randy did, pancreatic cancer. Much like Randy, the doctors found her cancer had spread too much for them to be able to treat, so she knew she only had a limited time left on Earth.

This speech was given at McConomy Auditorium at Carnegie Mellon University on Tuesday, September 18, 2007. The speech was called, Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams. The topic was about having dreams and perusing them, even though you may not get the exact results you were hoping for, you can still grow as a person. One example of this was that Randy wanted to be a professional football player. Due to his size this was never going to happen, but he did play youth football, (not very well). Randy learned many of his life lessons while be criticized by his couches to work hard and give one hundred percent.

Professor of Psychology and management director of Quality of Life Research Center at the Claremont Graduate University, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, discusses in an excerpt from Flow: The Psychology of Engagement with Everyday Life his theory of “flow” and how we can find it. “If we really want to live, we’d better start at once to try; if we don’t, it doesn’t matter, but we’d better start to die.” (Csikszentmihalyi 1) is a quote by W.H. Auden that Csikszentmihalyi says shows what his book is really about. We have to decide now whether we want to live or to die. “To live,” means to live in fullness by not wasting any time and to express your own uniqueness. Csikszentmihalyi uses an example of leading a good life about a man named Joe who worked

I haven’t been on this earth long enough to assume I know the ins and outs of life. I have no experience, no wisdom to impart on the world. Randy had the urgency of impending death as his motivating factor, and his wife and children. He had a lifetime of lessons that he compounded from his parents, his students, his colleagues, and relationships. I have yet to find my place in the world, and have yet to find my motivating factor. I don’t know what my regrets will be, or what I will have wished I knew at this age, or how much time I have left with my loved ones, or for how long I’ll remain in good health. Those types of things will most likely change my perspective on life. One thing I do know for sure though, is if you’re not putting yourself and your happiness first, you will never live your life to the fullest. I have been doing things that I don’t actually enjoy for far too long and I realized that that is the root of all my problems. Everyday, I try my hardest to make conscious efforts towards bettering myself and my life, so that one day I can look back on my blissful, well-spent time and share my wisdom with the world… or maybe just my grandkids.

“There’s More to Life than Happiness” was a fascinating article to me. As I have grown, matured and experienced life, I have contemplated many of the ideas that Frankl brought forth. Over the years, I have watched others pursue meaning and countless more pursue happiness. I have watched some struggle with depression and suicide while they languished in lack of meaning and purpose.

Individuals must now confront the meaning of their lives without the assured aid of transcendent purpose and direction, while the daily effort to make "both ends meet" condemns most to a life of "repetition," a la Kierkegaard, under the rule of habit and social conformity. The more we struggle to achieve individuality, the more desperate the effort to liberate ourself from the sway of social conformity and ritual, and the more poignant our inevitable confrontation with death.

Many have trouble finding the ideal way to live a happy life but it may come to your surprise that the answer can be found within yourself. A life worth living is waking up with a positive outlook on what you do and who you are; for that is the key to having a comfortable, easy going life. If you focus on what you have rather that what you don’t have you’ll be much better off, for gratefulness triumphs over rapacity. Love yourself and others by being all you can be; until then the tranquility that comes with said mindset will not be found. An individual’s mindset can be the difference between haven and hardship. By adopting optimistic qualities into to your daily way of life you’ll immensely be better off than those who see the glass half empty.

We work hard everyday because we all have something that we want to achieve. We all have a dream. A dream that we believe will bring us happiness. But in working hard everyday with our blood, sweat, and tears, we constantly feel stressed and pressured. We feel that our destination seems to take forever to reach. We often feel depressed and wonder, ‘when will I ever find my happiness?’. However, if you really think about what happiness is, it’s really nothing much. I feel like maybe people are going out of their ways to find happiness. It’s really great to think that you’re sacrificing now to be happy later on. It’s great to be ambitious and aim for more and more to be happy in the future. But if you are unhappy during the process of chasing your dreams, chances are that you might give up your dreams. Therefore, I think one of the best way to live life is to learn how to enjoy what is in the present. Life is like a tree with several branches; branches of sadness, hope, regret, fear, and happiness. As we grow older and the tree grow taller with new branches, the old branches turn into memories. Memories of sadness, hope, regret, fear, and most importantly happiness. If I ever forget the true meaning of happiness, these memories of happiness will be there to remind me. If you want to be happier and stronger, you have to learn how to find happiness in the moment, or else you will only become weaker. If you know and feel this moment truthfully with the heart and you’re ready to accept the present you are living in, then from the time you are born, your entire life can be beautiful. If someone doesn’t know this, then their life will never life will never be beautiful no matter how rich, famous, and successful their life is. This is because happiness is not something you can achieve. You can still feel happy during the process of achieving something. In this moment I might be experiencing a tough time, but this moment can also be the most beautiful moment in my life. Because even though I’m going through a difficult time, I can still find specks of happiness to give me strength to breathe, live, continue chasing my dreams, and hope for better days.