In this summary, you will learn:
1. How to be brave in the face of adversities.
2. The importance of fulfilling your dreams.
3. How your family is the most important aspect of your life.
| Language | English |
|---|---|
| No of pages | 20 |
| Book Publisher | i-Read Publications |
| Published Date | 02 Mar 2020 |
| Audio Book Length | 00:11:15 |
Randy Pausch is dying. But in the process, he's teaching millions of people about living.
Some colleges have adopted the idea of a "last lecture" to teach students life lessons that aren't necessarily included on a syllabus. But Randy's situation has brought a whole new meaning to the term. A computer-science professor at Carnegie Mellon University, Randy was told last August that his pancreatic cancer had spread and he had just three to six months to live. He's 47 and has three kids—almost 2, 3 and 6—and a wife he clearly adores.
Most of us would slip into a deep depression, but Randy used the experience as teaching material. And thanks to YouTube, his lecture doesn't require any tuition checks. His scenes from a life are punctuated with humor and humility. He deadpans, "My mother took great relish in introducing me as 'This is my son—he's a doctor but not the kind that helps people.'" After showing the walls of his childhood bedroom covered with his drawings of rocket ships and math equations, he tells his audience, "If your kids want to paint their bedrooms, as a favor to me, let 'em do it."
Randy's message is about following your dreams, dealing with the ones that don't come true and having fun along the way. And it has expanded far beyond that lecture hall. His talk has been viewed by more than 6 million people. He's a co-author of a best-selling book and has testified before Congress about pancreatic cancer, a disease that kills 33,000 Americans each year. He says the lessons were meant as a "message in a bottle" for his kids. But millions of us now feel part of Randy's extended family—and that it isn't too late to listen, learn and really live.
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A lot of professors give talks titled The Last Lecture. Professors are asked to consider their demise and to ruminate on what matters most to them: What wisdom would we impart to the world if we knew it was our last chance? If we had to vanish tomorrow, what would we want as our legacy?
When Randy Pausch, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon, was asked to give such a lecture, he didnt have to imagine it as his last, since he had recently been diagnosed with terminal cancer. But the lecture he gave, Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams, wasnt about dying.
It was about the importance of overcoming obstacles, of enabling the dreams of others, of seizing every moment (because time is all you have and you may find one day that you have less than you think). It was a summation of everything Randy had come to believe. It was about living.
In this book, Randy Pausch has combined the humour, inspiration, and intelligence that made his lecture such a phenomenon and given it an indelible form. It is a book that will be shared for generations to come.