Reaction Paper off of book Last Lecture - Essay Example

Reaction Paper: The Last Lecture The book en d The Last Lecture (Pausch and Zaslow, 2008) tells the story of a very famous lecture which was given on Sept 24th 2007 by computer science researcher and lecturer Randy Pausch who had just been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. The preface of the book reveals that it was actually put together by a friend of Pausch, Jeffrey Laslow, from a set of tape recordings which had been made by Pausch while he was cycling to keep fit. The reason why Pausch himself did not write the book is that he wanted to spend all the time that he had with his family.

This sounds like it should be a sad or serious book, which makes people think about death and illness, but in fact it is written with great humor and it makes the reader concentrate on life. The example of a very intelligent man, and a gifted speaker, talking about what is important in life is very uplifting and it changes our perception about what people should do when they are given bad news. One of the most impressive features of the book is that it does not try to hide the reality of cancer, or pretend that it is not happening, but instead it faces up to this tragedy fair and square.

The opening of the lecture, which is reported in the book, is a good example of this quite shocking approach. Pausch started off his lecture by explaining that he had been diagnosed with cancer and that the doctors had estimated that he had only a few months of good health left and then he used a visual aid: “I flashed a giant image of the CT scans of my liver onto the screen. The slide was headlined “The Elephant in the Room” and I had helpfully inserted red arrows pointing to each of the individual tumours!

” (Pausch and Zaslow, 2008 p. 16) This tactic got the main subject that is in everyone’s mind out into the open the effect on the reader, and no doubt also on the listeners in that lecture theatre, is to take away the embarrassment and the fear that people feel in the presence of terminal illness. The rest of the book acknowledges the illness as a fact that just has to be accepted, since it cannot be changed, and Pausch reveals his secret wisdom, which he wants to pass on to his children and also, I think, to the rest of the world.

He stresses living in the moment and striving after your dreams. He talks about working for the Disney corporation, and his own research in virtual reality, and he really gives the impression that anyone can truly do what they set out to do, if they devote themselves to the task. His book is an exercise in positive thinking and gratitude for all the things that we too easily take for granted. I found the book deeply moving because it showed a man who was genuinely concerned more about his family and how they were going to cope after he was gone.

He was not only an exemplary teacher and lecturer but also a loving husband and father. The book describes his wife Jai in very loving terms. When the press reported his death, there was a hint that actually he did have weak moments at times, which one would expect because everyone is human, but this weaker side did not come across in the book. The fox news website reported Zaslow’s comment that Pausch “only became emotional when they worked on the last chapter of the book, because to him that was ‘the end of the lecture, the book, his life.

’ One of the things that made me think in this book was the concept of “cognitive dissonance” (Pausch and Zaslow, 2008, p. 187) This was explained as an effect of the sudden drastic diagnosis, which made him on one level fully appreciate the seriousness of his illness and the nearness of death, but at the same time gave him an enthusiasm for life and a desire to capture deep thoughts and feelings and put them down on paper for his grieving family later. When the recorded lecture was broadcast on Youtube, it brought Pausch into a celebrity status, and though this must have been difficult for him at times, it was surely a good thing, because it allowed him to reach a global audience with his inspiring contribution to modern living and dying.

References Anonymous (2008) 2 “ ‘Last Lecture’ Professor Randy Pausch Dies at 47.” Fox news website, available at: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,391123,00.html Pausch, R. and Zaslow, J. (2008) The Last Lecture. New York: Hyperion. Pausch, R. “The Last Lecture: Achieving Your Childhood Dreams” Video. Available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji5_MqicxSo