The Last Lecture

The last lecture by Randy Pausch & Jeffrey Zaslow

A lot of professors give talks titled "The Last Lecture." Professors are asked to consider their demise and to 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 about living.

                              This book really touched my heart. By the end, I had shed a few tears. The fact that it was a true story really got to me. I liked it, but it took me a little while to get through it because it was pretty slow at times. It really made me have a new look on my life after reading about people so close to death. It was an inspiring novel that I would love to read again sometime. 

Rating: 7 out of 10