Genre: Memoir
Publisher: Hyperion, 2008
Pages: 224
Rating: Highly Recommend
Synopsis: A lot of professors give talks titled "The Last Lecture". Professors are asked to consider their demise and ruminate on what matters most to them. And while they speak, audiences can't help but mull the same question: 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 didn't 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"—wasn't 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 aboutliving.
In this book, Randy Pausch has combined the humor, 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.
Review: This is a must-read. Here are a handful of my favorite quotes from the book, and yes, I post noted these as I was reading.
Throughout my academic carer, I'd given some pretty good talks. But being considered the best speaker in a computer science department is like being known as the tallest of the seven dwarfs.
When you see yourself doing something badly and nobody's bothering to tell you anymore, that's a bad place to be. You may not want to hear it, but your critics are often the ones telling you they still love you and care about you, and want to make you better.
Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.
We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand.
Never make a decision until you have to.
Just because you're in the driver's seat doesn't mean you have to run people over.
Throughout my academic carer, I'd given some pretty good talks. But being considered the best speaker in a computer science department is like being known as the tallest of the seven dwarfs.
When you see yourself doing something badly and nobody's bothering to tell you anymore, that's a bad place to be. You may not want to hear it, but your critics are often the ones telling you they still love you and care about you, and want to make you better.
Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.
We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand.
Never make a decision until you have to.
Just because you're in the driver's seat doesn't mean you have to run people over.
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