Book Review: The Last Lecture
By: Asif Rashid
The Premise: The Last Lecture is a fact-based story of a Professor-cum-father Randy Pausch, the father of three children. Randy is suffering from pancreatic cancer; so fatal even doctors have lost hope and declared that he has only a few months to survive; since his last treatment didn’t work.
As a tradition universities invite all professors to deliver a farewell lecture: as the last lecture of their life. Therefore, it becomes extremely important to figure out what message or what wisdom they would impart to the world and the students before leaving the world.
Hence Randy was also invited to deliver the lecture. He is so engrossed in his work that instead of spending time with his wife Jay and his children, he chooses to prepare a speech (supposedly his last lecture) also for the reason that his children are too young to comprehend and remember anything and thought he has to do something that could last longer which may eventually help his children to achieve their childhood dreams.
The author knows that every parent wants to teach their children the difference between the right and the wrong but finds it equally essential to teach them how to fight the ordeals of life. As a corollary He decides the title of his topic “REALLY ACHIEVING YOUR CHILDHOOD DREAMS” in which he enchants the whole audience by talking about the most fundamental and toughest aspects of life.
The Elephant in the Room: Before addressing anything Randy wants the audience to know that he is feeling well and still doing great in his life but at the same time he is very anxious thinking that every person in the audience would be thinking how a man dying of cancer will look like and suddenly his father’s advice knocked his brain that “when there’s elephant in the room introduce it” and in the beginning, he showed the giant image of his CT scan and said there are 10 tumors in his liver and he has merely 6 months to live and if I don’t seem depressed and morose sorry to disappoint you! Randy wants to bequeath the message to the audience that we can’t stop problems and challenges of life because we have no control over them but one thing over which we have full control is how we respond.
The “Big Cheese”: “Graham” the football coach has always been a big cheese to him. He often reprimands randy during his practice sessions. One day the assistant coach came to meet randy and said, “Coach Ghram seems very authoritarian but remember when you learn anything somewhere and you were screwing up and nobody interrupts you that’s not the best place to learn”.
It means your teacher has totally given up on you and has no hope on you. Every person should remember that he/she may hate when someone criticizes them but you should always remember your critics are the people that actually help you to make you a better person.
Dead Ideas: Randy also tried to replace the accepted cliché in education that every teacher has only one goal which is to teach the students how to learn that is valuable also, but he thought it would be better to teach students how to judge themselves so by judging themselves they could find their true abilities and could trace their major flaws in view of the fact that his mentor “Coach Graham” has told him that “the only way any of us can improve is if we develop a real ability to assess ourselves”.
Be The First Penguin: Randy always encourages his students to explore something new that would blow the mind of any person and not worry about failure as he himself embraced the fact “That Experience is what you get when you don’t get what you wanted”, he also added that every person is very keen to fulfill his childhood dreams but as you get older, you may realize that enabling the dreams of others is even more fun.
Optimism: By reading this book you may realize that Randy was the real example of what optimism should be. He was so optimistic that when he got to know that he had only six months to live still he felt himself lucky that he was not hit by the bus. He is fortunate that the cancer is giving him time to plan something for his family and a chance to have a deep conversation with his wife Jai.
Recommendation: Randy’s last lecture is a final note to the world and his family about how to achieve dreams and how to live life. The overall writing of this book is very captivating. I highly recommend this book to every bibliophile.
(The author is pursuing B.A from Bemina degree college Sgr. The book is published by Hyperion)
