Sunday, April 26, 2009

The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch

Picture credit


If you have one last lecture to give before you die, what will it be? Will you summing up a lifetime of learning and teaching? What kind of insight you want to pass on to your audience? So many questions linger in our mind after reading this book. Still no answers found!

So, whose last lecture were we reviewing?

This is a book inspired by the last lecture, literally, given by a dying professor, Prof. Dr. Randy Pausch, to the hall-packed audience at Carnegie Mellon University, entitled
Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams in September 2007. The original lecture was uploaded by students to the internet and instantly became a huge hit! So much so, Randy was invited to many TV shows included our favorite The Oprah Winfrey Show (that was where we first discovered him and fell in love with his geeky enthusiasm to live life to the fullest!)

This New York Times number one best-seller book is upbeat, joke-filled and heartfelt journey of Randy’s life. It also tells about the importance of achieving childhood dreams, managing time and above all loving every minute of your life. It is a biography, collection of memoirs and motivational book rolls into one. It took him 53 bike rides to pass to his co-author things that he wanted to share while fighting the dateline on his life.

So here are some of the wisdoms he passed on to us (we have shared some of it with our students!):

  • Give yourself permission to dream and dream big and fuel your kid’s dreams too.
  • Ask for what you want. More often than you suspect, the answer you will get is, ‘Sure’.
  • Dare to take risk. Experience is what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted. And it can be the most valuable thing you have to offer.
  • Look for the best in everybody. If you wait long enough, people will surprise and impress you. Be patience.
  • Make time for what matters. Time is all you have. And you may find one day that you have less than you think. So Slow down and enjoy what matters most to you.
  • Let kids be themselves. Help your kid to foster joy for life and develop the tools to fulfil their own wishes.

Other than the contents, we also like the way it was written. It was not beautiful but it was personal. We felt as if he sat us down and told us personally all these amazingly funny stories about how he achieved his dreams and lessons learned along the way. We could feel his happiness, his sadness, his enthusiasm and even his desperation to leave his legacy for his three small children, Dylan, Logan and Chloe.

After all this book (and lecture) was created as a roadmap of life for his children in going through their life without a father!

RIP Randy Pausch (1960- 2008).

P/s: Summary ini ditulis oleh Kak Marina semasa kami melakukan Book Review Session di kampus. Ulasan saya mengenai buku ini akan menyusul kemudian.

2 comments:

AbnormalSuam said...

Buku yang menarik dengan kupasan yang cukup cantik...

Cuma satu sajalah masalahnya... mampukah minda masyarakat kita yang cukup senang dengan hiburan konsert, nyanyian dan lakonan menerima sesuatu yang berat seperti ini?

Agak subjektif bagi jawapannya...

Pishaposh said...

AbnormalSuam:
Terima kasih atas pujian itu. Itu saya kira untuk penulisnyalah - kak marina ... nanti saya akan sampaikan kepadanya.

Mengenai persoalan itu, saya melihat semuanya berbalik kepada kecenderungan kita ... kalau kita cenderung kepada ilmu, tiada apa yang akan menjadi berat untuk diterima ...

Dan, ya, saya bersetuju, persoalan ini agak subjektif untuk dijawab.

Terima kasih kerana sudi berkunjung.