PDF Summary:The Last Lecture, by Randy Pausch
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1-Page PDF Summary of The Last Lecture
The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon University, is a distillation of his life lessons and experiences. Written with reporter Jeffrey Zaslow, the best-selling book is an expanded version of a “Last Lecture” Pausch gave in 2007, after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.
The “Last Lecture” series was a tradition in which professors presented their philosophy of life, as if it were their last chance to share what was important to them. It truly was a last chance for Pausch, who had only months to live. His book and lecture, which went viral and has been viewed by millions, are about living your dreams.
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Disney ‘Imagineer’
Pausch made a memorable childhood trip to Disneyland in 1969 when he was eight. As his interest in science and engineering developed, he dreamed of designing Disney rides and attractions. Years later, after receiving a sabbatical for virtual reality research, he talked Disney into accepting him for six months to work on a secret Aladdin attraction involving a magic carpet ride.
He had some trouble getting a Carnegie Mellon dean to approve such an unconventional study request, but he persisted and his experience as an “Imagineer” was a highlight of his life. He wore his Disney Imagineer’s shirt when he delivered his Last Lecture.
Other Life Lessons
Besides discussing the importance of pursuing your childhood dreams, Pausch used his Last Lecture to recount other lessons he’d learned or taught throughout his life, including:
The Value of Honest Feedback: Pausch could be arrogant and tactless, but on one occasion, a mentor put him in his place. While Pausch was an undergraduate at Brown University, the faculty member told him it was a shame that people found him arrogant because it would hold him back in the future. Pausch concluded that he’d just been tactfully told he was a jerk. He came to appreciate those in his life who gave him honest feedback and he tried to do the same for his students.
People Over Things: Before he was married, Pausch enjoyed being an uncle to his sister’s two children. Once, when the kids were seven and nine, he picked them up in his new convertible. As they climbed in, their mother warned them not to get it dirty. Hearing this, Pausch opened a can of soda and calmly poured it onto the cloth-covered back seats. His message was that a car is just a possession—and people are more important than things. Later that weekend, when his nephew got the flu and threw up on the car seat, Pausch was glad he’d delivered that message.
Brick Walls Are Opportunities: Pausch learned to overcome obstacles in his academic career and came to believe that when you run into brick walls, they’re an opportunity for you to demonstrate how badly you want something.
But at age 37, he encountered one of his most formidable challenges—winning over the woman who eventually became his wife. He met Jai at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, when he was invited to give a lecture. She was a graduate student there in comparative literature. They hit it off, but when he asked her to move to Pittsburgh, she refused him multiple times. At one point, she told him she didn’t love him. Distraught, he called his parents for advice and they told him to be patient and respectful of her feelings. Eventually, Jai realized she loved him and moved to Pittsburgh, where they were married. He’d used the brick wall of her resistance demonstrate how much he wanted a life with her.
Be a Tigger, Not an Eeyore: Pausch believed everyone has a choice in life to be like one of two Winnie-the-Pooh characters: you can be like fun-loving, exuberant Tigger or like gloomy Eeyore. Throughout his life, Pausch looked for the fun in everything—he didn’t see any benefit to being a sad Eeyore. After his cancer diagnosis, his Tigger persona helped him live his last days to the fullest.
Take the risk: When you’ve failed, you’ve learned something about how to succeed in the future. In fact, failing is such an integral part of success that Pausch liked to give an award for the most spectacular failure to student teams who took big creative risks and failed. He dubbed it the “First Penguin Award”—the name comes from the way one penguin in a flock always jumps into the water ahead of the others, taking the biggest risk of being eaten by predators.
Work hard: Although people often want to avoid work, there’s no benefit to taking a shortcut. The more you work, the more you learn about your subject or pursuit and the bigger the eventual reward. Work is like interest on your savings—it compounds. When Pausch received tenure earlier than is typical, colleagues wanted to know how he’d done it. In reply, he invited them to call him at 10 p.m. at his office on any Friday night—in other words, he worked hard for it.
Show gratitude: When people give you their time and attention, write them a thank-you note. You’ll stand out because thank-you notes are rare, which may benefit you in the future. But more importantly, showing gratitude is a sign of character. If you can’t adequately pay someone back for a kindness, pay it forward. Pausch made a point of showing gratitude in both large and small ways. For instance, he sent cookies to colleagues who reviewed journal articles for him. Also, after receiving tenure, Pausch thanked his research team for their contribution to his success by taking them on a week-long trip to Disney World.
Be both optimistic and realistic: Well-meaning friends sometimes tell cancer patients to be optimistic or their treatments will fail. As a result, when they have setbacks or bad days, patients feel guilty for not being positive enough. However, optimism must be coupled with realism. Pausch believed he could be realistic about his condition, but also be optimistic that he could do things to improve how he felt and continue to find joy in daily life.
The Truth About Dreams
Pausch felt it was important not to impose his own dreams on his children, but to let them discover their own paths. As a professor, he’d counseled many students who had chosen majors that pleased their parents and ended up being miserable. His message was: be what you want to be. Pursue your own dreams and do what brings you joy, regardless of anyone’s expectations.
Achieving your dreams, he said, isn’t so much about chasing them as about living your life in the right way. If you do that, “your dreams will come to you.”
Randy Pausch died on July 25, 2008, at age 47.
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PDF Summary Introduction
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Pausch’s plan is to spend every possible moment with his family, to help smooth their transition to a life without him, and to encapsulate in his Last Lecture the joy of life and his appreciation of it. He describes it as trying to put himself into a bottle that would wash up on the beach years later for his children, then aged 5, 2, and 1.
A videotaped lecture can’t replace 20 years of parenting. But the purpose of engineering isn’t to find a perfect solution—it’s to do your best with the limited resources you have, and that’s what Pausch resolves to do.
(Shortform note: This summary combines the introductory and biographical information in Parts 1 and 2 of the book. Parts 3-6 focus on the content of Pausch’s lecture plus similar material that was added in his book.)
PDF Summary Part 1: The Last Lecture
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A ‘Dream’ Childhood
Pausch and his older sister grew up in a middle-class community in Columbia, Maryland (suburban Baltimore), the children of an English teacher and an auto insurance salesman. He credited his positive childhood for the fact that he went on to achieve his dreams and live a fulfilling life.
His parents taught him old-school values of humility, hard work, initiative, the joy of learning, and meeting high expectations. They were extremely frugal—the family rarely went out for dinner or movies. Instead, they urged their children to read books. The children frequently consulted the dictionary during dinner when a question came up in a discussion. Whenever he wanted to know something, Pausch’s parents told him to look it up in the dictionary or encyclopedia.
His father liked to tell stories, especially with a moral. Pausch credits his father for much of the wisdom he quotes in his Last Lecture. His father had been a medic in World War II, serving in the Battle of the Bulge.
Pausch was naturally cocky, but his mother kept him humble thoughout his life. She was sparing with her praise, once describing him to a friend as “alert, but not terribly...
PDF Summary Part 2: Fulfilling Childhood Dreams
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- Feedback: When you know you’re doing something badly, but no one is criticizing you, it means people have given up on you. That was the advice an assistant coach gave Pausch after a practice in which the coach had pushed him hard. Your critics are often the ones who care about you and want you to improve.
- Hard work: While authorities often urge parents and coaches to build children’s self-esteem, that’s not something you can give them. They develop it only when they confront something they can’t do, and work hard until they can do it. Pausch’s coach taught him that if you work hard, you’ll be able to do things tomorrow that you can’t do today.
Although Pausch thought he was learning football, he was learning how to live.
(Shortform note: During a TV special on Pausch after the Last Lecture, reporter Diane Sawyer arranged for him to visit a Pittsburgh Steelers’ practice and catch a few passes from players. He also kicked a successful field goal in one try. View the special at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-a7LRwqwNw)
The World Book
Pausch loved the World Book Encyclopedia and pored over it as a...
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Learn more about our summaries →PDF Summary Part 3: Lessons Learned
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Earlier Life Lessons
Besides the hard lessons of his diagnosis, Pausch used his Last Lecture to recount other lessons he had learned or taught throughout his life:
The Value of Honest Feedback
Pausch could be arrogant and tactless, but on two memorable occasions, others put him in his place. The first was his sister Tammy, when he was seven and she was nine. As they waited at the school bus stop one morning, he was being bossy and obnoxious, so she tossed his lunch box into a puddle just as the bus came. She was sent to the principal’s office, and the principal decided to let their mother handle it. She, in turn, deferred to their father. Their dad listened to the story with a smile and all but congratulated Tammy for putting her brother in his place.
Later, a faculty member and mentor at Brown University, where Pausch was an undergraduate, told him it was a shame that people found him arrogant because it would hold him back in the future; Pausch concluded that he’d just been tactfully told he was a jerk.
He came to appreciate those in his life who gave him honest feedback and he tried to do the same for his students.
People Over Things
Before he was...
PDF Summary Part 4: Keys to Success
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Know Yourself
From playing youth football, Pausch learned the importance of accurately judging your abilities and flaws. You can’t improve if you don’t have a realistic picture of yourself. So, as a professor, Pausch incorporated peer feedback into his class projects.
He collected feedback from students on their teammates, then created bar charts for each student, showing graphically whether her peers thought she was working hard, whether she was creative, whether others thought she was a team player, and how easy they thought she was to work with. Students could see not only how they ranked individually but also compared to everyone else in the class. In addition, Pausch shared classmates’ suggestions for improvement with each student.
For most students, the assessments were an eye-opener and they responded with improvement.
Enable Others’ Dreams
While at Carnegie Mellon, Pausch launched several ambitious projects where he gave students free rein and they performed far beyond expectations. He thought of these projects as ways of fueling students’ imaginations and enabling them to pursue and realize their dreams.
- The Building Virtual Worlds course....
PDF Summary Part 5: Advice for Living
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Don’t resist mom: Don’t bother resisting your mom—she’ll win every time. For instance, no matter how often Pausch asked his mother to stop calling him “Randolph,” it did no good. Finally, he gave up debating with her and decided to appreciate her more instead.
Don’t complain: Complaining doesn’t advance your goals or make you happier. When you run into challenges, work harder rather than complaining. Jackie Robinson, the first African-American to play Major League baseball, knew he had to work harder than white players and, despite harassment from fans, that’s what he did.
Learn to work together: The ability to work effectively with others is essential in the workplace and in family life. Here are Pausch’s tips for his students: Properly introduce yourself, have a comfortable meeting spot, allow everyone to speak (don’t interrupt or finish others’ sentences), don’t be egotistical about claiming credit, praise each other, and ask questions rather than making assertions.
See the best in everyone: Almost everyone has a good side. When you feel frustrated with someone, it may mean you haven’t given them enough time to show you their good side. Be...
PDF Summary Part 6: Final Thoughts
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Dreams Will Come
To wrap up his Last Lecture, Pausch had put his final points on slides in case he became too emotional to speak them. Yet when the time comes to conclude his talk, he feels at peace for having finally said what he most urgently needed to say. In effect, he’d let it all out.
Hiis closing remarks are a summation of his life. Achieving your dreams, he says, isn’t so much about chasing them as about living your life properly. If you do that, “your dreams will come to you.”
He ends with a slide picturing his family, and acknowledges that his talk hadn’t been only for those in the audience, but for his children.
Randy Pausch died on July 25, 2008, at age 47.
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