Book Review: The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch
January 30th, 2009
The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch was our book club‘s selection for January. We thought that it would be nice to start off the year with something inspiring. This was an easy, quick read (despite the fact that I didn’t read it terribly quickly in terms of amount of days, but it didn’t take me too many sittings). I had seen parts of the lecture, and the book inspired me to rewatch the lecture when I was finished reading the book. This was my 6th qualifying book for the From the Stacks challenge (5 were required, but this one meets the criteria and time frame, so I’m counting it!).
Randy Pausch was a professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon. He learned that he had pancreatic cancer in 2006 and died about 2 years later. Shortly before his “last lecture,” he was given only a few months to live. He made preparations for his family and tried to impart everything he could to his three very young kids. His story is inspiring and sad. As a mother, I had a difficult time with the thought of my daughter losing either of her parents, especially before she has a chance to really get to know us. I wiped away a few tears after finishing the book, placed it on the couch next to me, and turned to Gabe and asked him to read the book if something ever happened to me before Maddie is an adult. I felt he had some good advice and left a nice legacy for his kids.
I couldn’t decide whether I felt like he was doing the right thing by putting time and energy into the “last lecture” when he needed to be spending every possible moment he had left with his wife and kids. In the end, Randy Pausch will be remembered and memorialized because of the lecture and the subsequent book. His kids will have something tangible to grasp and say, “This was my dad. He was a great man who contributed positively to many lives, and he loved us more than anything.”
His lecture was subtitled, “Really Acheiving Your Childhood Dreams,” and he outlined his childhood dreams and how he had acheived most of them. He described the lessons he learned from the goals that he did not attain (such as playing in the NFL). It was the story of his life but, at the same time, advice to everyone about how to approach life and enable others to acheive their dreams. Most of all, the lecture was for his kids and all the things that he wanted them to know (or as much as you can say in an hour and 15 minutes).
The geek side of me (is there any other side?) enjoyed some of his computer science stories. I liked hearing about the virtual reality endeavors, and I’m especially excited about the Alice project in which he played a part. Alice is a program designed to teach kids how to write computer programs without them realizing that they are learning a programming language. Pretty cool! Maybe Maddie will be interested in it some day. Randy’s experiences with Disney Imagineering were also neat.
Overall, the writing was good and kept me entertained. The chapters were short, so it was easy for me to pick it up and read a little bit in my limited time. The lessons may not be earth shattering, but they were put well. He made me laugh multiple times. And the book made me cry. I felt it was an inspiring story, and I recommend this book.
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