The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch

Randy Pausch is 45 years old, he has three young children, a wonderful wife, and a stable teaching career as a professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, but all this, he finds out, is in jeopardy; he has been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, the cancer type with the least percent survivors of all, and finds out after undergoing a risky surgery and intense chemotherapy that all he has left is 3 to 6 months of good health.

Three to six months seems like very little time to settle everything for one's family and etc. before their passing. Pausch, however does not choose to waste one second of the time he has left. Since he is a professor and lecturing is second nature to him as part of his last acts on earth Randy arranges to give a last lecture at Carnegie Mellon. As if this wasn't enough to take on during the last stages of one's life, Randy also made the decision to move to Virginia so his wife and children would be close to family when the time of his death arrived and they needed them most. Would this lecture be a goodbye on Pausch's part? No more of a last offer of wisdom to those around him and a way for his children to learn about their dad and the life lessons he would have taught them but would no longer be around to do so. What did he call this momentous lecture? "The Last Lecture: Really Achieving Your Childhood dreams".

This memoir is more or less a version of Pausch's last lecture, slightly expanded upon, in which he shares experiences from his life and offers advice to those that are all so lucky to just still have much of their lives ahead of them.

I found Pauch's style of writing very easy to read and very personal; I felt as if he I was sitting in the lecture hall listening to him speak as I was reading. Something very surprising about the tone of the memoir is Pauch's unwavering optimism; despite surgeries, chemotherapy and death practically waiting on his doorstep he managed to keep a smile on and even those who caught a peek of him just through a car window noticed.

Throughout his life, Pausch had many amazing opportunities such as experiencing zero gravity at the Nasa center, creating various virtual reality experiences, teaching at Carnegie Mellon, and even using a sixth month sabbatical to work as a Disney Imagineer.

Though his condition eventually lead to Pauch's death in 2008 his book became a bestseller and left many who read it, including myself filled with inspiration and a newfound desire to relish all moments of life.

Let me leave you with one last piece of wisdom from the bestseller, "We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand,"-Randy Pausch, The Last Lecture.