As a student at Pilibos, we are assigned many books which are mandatory to read as part of our class curriculum. However, by the end of this book, I had forgotten all about the "mandatory" aspect and enjoyed all the lessons The Last Lecture had taught me. Randy Pausch, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon University, was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and well knew his time on Earth was about to end faster than he had expected. A professor's "last lecture" at Carnegie Mellon is supposed to analyze the most important subject in their life and what they picture the end of their life to be. Randy chose "Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams" as his lecture topic. During the duration of the book, he explains all the experiences he went through during his short life, and how he accomplished all the goals he set for himself. For example, while chaperoning students on a trip to NASA, he was not allowed to enter a spaceship on display, as it was only available to the students. He decided to find a "loop-hole" by changing his status to become a journalist, a person who is allowed to explore the spaceship. One can acquire many lessons from this short memoir, but the one that I acquired seemed the most significant; you cannot change destiny. You can, however, change the way you perceive every moment and become optimistic on all situations. Randy teaches this lesson by using the quote, " We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand." An example of this includes his wedding day. Randy and his wife, Jai, were supposed to fly away in a hot-air balloon as a romantic getaway. The balloon had complications along the way, and had shifted paths so that they did not have a place to land. Randy reminisces about this event not in a pessimistic way, but by an optimistic point of view, by saying that it would make a very memorable and unique wedding story to share with their children. He establishes the essence of "living every moment as if it was your last" and taught readers that not all good things come easy. The Last Lecture is my favorite book because it reminds me that no matter how tragic a problem can be, there is always a more tragic one somewhere in the world. All you have to do is keep your head high, and push forward because the end results are always rewarding. Also, a pessimist has a lesser chance of accomplishing a goal than an optimist does, and therefore I choose to be a "Tigger"(optimist) and not an "Eeyore"(pessimist), as Randy says it.
Memorable quotes from the novel that are forever encrypted into my mind include:
-"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."
-"Time is all you have. And you may find one day that you have less than you think."
-"If nobody ever worried about what was in other people's heads, we'd all be thirty three percent more effective in our lives and in our jobs."
-"Have something to bring to the table. Because that will make you more welcome"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji5_MqicxSo - The actual lecture
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