The lecture I decided to report on was “The Last Lecture: Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams”. This lecture was by Randy Pausch who was a courageous and inspiring human being. Randy was born October 23rd, 1960 and passed away July 25th, 2008. He left behind a wife named Jay and three kids name Dylan, Logan, and Chloe. Randy was born in Baltimore, Maryland. He is known for his creation of Alice software, virtual reality research with Disney imagineers, and his inspirational speech “The Last Lecture”. He was an American professor of computer science and human-computer interaction at Carnegie Mellon University. Randy was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in September 2006 and then in August 2007 he was given a terminal diagnosis with 3 to 6 months left of good health. He gave an inspirational speech at Carnegie Mellon University on September 18th, 2007. The speech has became very popular and currently has over 12 millions views on youtube. This alone says a lot about the speech. If there have been over 12 million people that have viewed the lecture on the computer, it must be very good.
During Randy’s last speech he was very happy, humorous, and shared inspirational life lessons. The lecture he gives is to his kids and it is about achieving your childhood dreams. It was based upon if you had to give a last lecture before you die, what would it be. Randy runs through all the experience he has gone through in his life and how the people and situations have affected him. There are two ways that Randy could have gone. He could have been depressed and upset, or he could cherish the time he had left and make it what it’s worth. He decided to look at his death as a positive thing and cherish every moment he had left. He does not look as this situation as unfair but as the way the world works. He uses a quote to sum this expression “We all stand on the dart board, but a very small amount of us are going to get hit by the dart called pancreatic cancer.” This quote explains itself by saying that being hit with this illness is just the way the world works. Some people are going to get sick and die and he is one of those people.
Throughout Randy’s speech he uses personal stories, quotes, humor, and life lessons to get his point across of achieving your childhood dreams. Randy uses personal stories that all sorts of people can relate to. There is a story where Randy was in football practice and his coach was riding him all practice. There was nothing Randy could to right in the coach’s mind. After practice the assistant coach goes up to Randy and says “Coach Graham rode you pretty hard today didn’t he” and Randy replied “Yeah.” The coach says back to him “that’s a good thing. When you are screwing up and nobody says anything to you anymore, then that means they have given up.” The whole general idea of this story is to make Randy realize that when people are on your case and correcting you, it means the care about you and want to make you better. A lot of people can relate to this example in many different ways other then in sports. This makes the audience think about times when people are on your case and that they are doing it for a reason.
Randy persuades his audience to achieve their childhood dreams. He uses life lessons and quotations to make people want to change and live their life to the fullest. An example of this is "It's not about how to achieve your dreams, it's about how to lead your life, ... If you lead your life the right way, the karma will take care of itself, the dreams will come to you." This is an example of Randy telling the audience a quote and making them think to themselves. There are many different thoughts that could be going through their minds. He uses his example of being very sick to make people realize how lucky they are. One example he says is to put yourself into his position. Think about how it would affect if you were told that you only have 3 to 6 months left to live. It really puts your life into perspective for yourself and makes you think. One day you could be here and the next day you could be gone. During Randy’s speech he uses humor to keep the audience attentive and interested. He does not want his speech to be a sad speech and all about him but rather what do with your life and to be grateful for what you have. He is positive through the whole experience since finding out about his diagnosis. People look at this as very inspirational because he does not curl up in a ball and dwell on what has happened. Instead, he is positive about it and makes the most out of the rest of his life. At the very end he sums up his speech and the type of person he is. He says he did this speech for his kids and to teach them life values.
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