Yesterday was one of the best days I've had in awhile - I slept in a bit, worked from home, played golf on a beautiful course, and had a fun dinner with my husband and his family. After I got home, I watched some of the Olympics, but despite my usually punctual 10 pm bedtime, I just couldn't seem to fall asleep. Perhaps, I just didn't want the good day to end. So, I picked up this little book, thinking I'd just get it started before falling asleep. Two hours and a few tears later, I finished it. Perhaps it was the great mood I was already in, but this book really accentuated the idea of focusing on the positive. Pausch, the author, was a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon who was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and given 3-6 months to live. He had a wife and three children under the age of 6. But, he was determined to deliver his "last lecture" at CM and focused on the topic of achieving your childhood dreams. Throughout the book, Pausch talks about the life experiences that influenced his last lecture - and his desire to focus on life and leaving behind a memory of his love for his children - rather than focusing on all the negative surrounding his illness. Pausch has some great anecdotes/one-liners. He talks about how people always ask him how he got to be so successful, and he'd respond, "Call me any Friday night at 10 pm in my office and I'll tell you all about it." And another one about how experience is what you get when you didn't get what you wanted. This book is a mix between Mitch Albom and Everything I Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. It's sentimental and cliched - and Pausch embraces this. He is a consumate optimist (he describes himself as a Tigger instead of an Eyeore and has a strange, but endearing, obsession with Disney World) - but he definitely has some great perspective on how life should be lived. Randy Pausch passed away last month, but obviously not before making a very lasting impact on those around him and anyone who reads this book.
Thursday, August 14, 2008
The Last Lecture - Randy Pausch
Yesterday was one of the best days I've had in awhile - I slept in a bit, worked from home, played golf on a beautiful course, and had a fun dinner with my husband and his family. After I got home, I watched some of the Olympics, but despite my usually punctual 10 pm bedtime, I just couldn't seem to fall asleep. Perhaps, I just didn't want the good day to end. So, I picked up this little book, thinking I'd just get it started before falling asleep. Two hours and a few tears later, I finished it. Perhaps it was the great mood I was already in, but this book really accentuated the idea of focusing on the positive. Pausch, the author, was a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon who was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and given 3-6 months to live. He had a wife and three children under the age of 6. But, he was determined to deliver his "last lecture" at CM and focused on the topic of achieving your childhood dreams. Throughout the book, Pausch talks about the life experiences that influenced his last lecture - and his desire to focus on life and leaving behind a memory of his love for his children - rather than focusing on all the negative surrounding his illness. Pausch has some great anecdotes/one-liners. He talks about how people always ask him how he got to be so successful, and he'd respond, "Call me any Friday night at 10 pm in my office and I'll tell you all about it." And another one about how experience is what you get when you didn't get what you wanted. This book is a mix between Mitch Albom and Everything I Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. It's sentimental and cliched - and Pausch embraces this. He is a consumate optimist (he describes himself as a Tigger instead of an Eyeore and has a strange, but endearing, obsession with Disney World) - but he definitely has some great perspective on how life should be lived. Randy Pausch passed away last month, but obviously not before making a very lasting impact on those around him and anyone who reads this book.
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