The Last Lecture

The story I chose to blog was a narrative called The Last Lecture. This piece of work tells the story of Randy Pausch, a victim of pancreatic cancer. Randy Pausch wrote this story himself. Pausch was a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon. He was told of his pancreatic cancer when he was about the age of forty-six. The time span of how much time he had left to live was three to six months. Pausch was informed that he was bearing ten tumors in his liver. The news of his illness was difficult for Pausch, but especially for his family. His family was very important factor in his life. I read this work and felt that I could relate to his hardship because I care very much about my family. My family is the most important thing to me and I felt from Pausch’s writing that his family was what he would miss the most.
In my opinion, this book is a very good book and I recommend it to anyone. This book tells the life story of a man who devoted himself to his family, job and also to following his dreams. Randy Pausch was a very insightful man. He was incredibly creative. An example of his creativity is revealed when he was a young boy and he asked his parents if he could paint different things on his walls. His father always encouraged him to be creative and supported this idea. He painted things such as a quadratic formula, an elevator door, a submarine and much more. His sense of humor was another of his great strengths which is obvious when he wrote that he had painted Snow white’s mirror with the line: “Remember when I told you that you were the fairest? I lied!” This experience in his life encouraged me to ask my mother if I myself could decorate my own room.
This story shows a man who was told he had less than a year to live, yet he did not lose his mind. He was upset, but he did not let this illness shut him out from the rest of the world. He disgruntled his wife when he revealed to her his wish of saying his last lecture at Carnegie Mellon, on her birthday. She was upset but soon she realized that this was what he really wanted to do and supported him, Pausch treasured his marriage as one of the greatest gifts of his life.
To be brutally honest, the reason I picked this book up was because it was small and I thought I could finish it and get it over with. I never considered how inspiring and interesting this book would turn out to be. I was mesmerized by this book and surprised by the high quality of this wonderful novel. When I caught sight of this piece of literature, my mother told me she had read it and thought it was absolutely wonderful. The moment I heard it was somewhat of a biography, I thought it would be very boring and tedious. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that this novel is the exact opposite of what I thought it would be.
This man taught me that life is full of disappointments. Not everything that happens to you will be exactly what you wanted or turn out the way you wanted it to. It is your decision on how your deal with these unlucky events. A quote of this very incisive man is that “We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand.”