Blog Assignment 7

Randy Pausch's Last Lecture

If you do anything, ever, please watch this YouTube video! I could not have been more wrong about what I thought this video was going to be.  Let me explain.  Before watching this video I had read Randy Pausch's book "The Last Lecture." My thoughts on the book although sympathetic were not very cordial to be frank.  To further explain this let me give some background.  Dr. Pausch was a great teacher in the field of computer science, specializing in virtual reality. In 2008, the year in which he died, Dr. Pausch was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.  This is the most deadly form of the disease.  He was basically given about three to six months of healthy living before things would take a turn for the worse and he would inevitably die.  So, for his children to have something to remember him by he gave and wrote "The Last Lecture," appropriately titled because he was a professor.

Like I said, don't think I'm a heartless jerk, I was very sympathetic to the situation.  I know that everyone has a family member that has been victim to cancer in one form or another, I have.  But, after reading the book I thought I had been dooped.  Here is, supposedly, this book that would tug at my heart strings and reveil these unknown truths about the universe.  I was supposed to be blown away.  I was not.  He refers to this in the video, but he confesses his arrogance.  It comes off as a self-depreciating joke in the video, but in the book it comes across, to me, as arrogance.  He also talks about "head-fake" teaching.  Which refers to teaching without someone knowing they are being taught.  It's a "head-fake."  I thought I had been head-faked when I read the book, but not that I was taught something but almost like I had been played.  I thought, here's this guy playing to the emotions of the public and putting out this book where basically all he talks about is how great he was.  His advice came across as, and I'm using artistic license here, "I got it(life) right.  Look at me and how smart I am.  Do it my way or you'll be wrong."

Now, about this, after watching the video I feel like I was proved wrong.  He was sincere and humble in the video.  He gave credit where it was due.  It was touching.  Maybe this is because I could see him, hear his inflection, and he was real.  Let me say this, I could not have been more wrong about how I perceived the book.  In my wrap up blog from C4T there is a blog about perception by Justin Tarte called "What do you see...?" read it.  My perception was off the mark when I was reading and after I had read the book.

What Dr. Pausch was doing was leaving something behind for his family, his legacy.  Now, could this have been left alone in a letter to his children and just have had the video to go along with it?  Wouldn't that have been enough for them?  I say yes.  But he wrote a book and sold it, and made a lot of money for his family. I thought this was a little cheap, playing the emotional card.  I mean thousands of people die from cancer and don't publish books about how great they were and what they had learned from life.  But to his credit, he is a smart guy, he did play the emotional card and he did have a lot of good advice to give.  Now, to Forrest Gump's eternal credit, his family can say "we don't have to worry about money no more.  And I said, 'That's good! One less thing.'"

All that being said, watch the video.  It'll change your life.