Kimi Chen review The Last Lecture

Book Review: The Last Lecture

“Give yourself permission to dream,” quoted by the author of The Last Lecture, Randy Pausch. Randy Pausch discovered that he only have few months to live, because he has a cancer called pancreatic cancer. Therefore he started to finalize his whole perspective of life by lecturing and how he wan his children to remember him when they grow up. So that’s why this novel is called The Last Lecture. He was a father of three children, Logan, Chloe, and Dylan. Every single thing that he mentioned in this lecture is the hope and love that Randy wanted to tell all of his children. Nevertheless, The Last Lecture inspired people, gave people permission to dream big, and it tells the audience never to be afraid to try and feel unafraid toward your life. That's what he did to his life; never fear to dream.

In everybody’s childhood, people all dream big. Some say they wanted to be a fireman, even some of them say they wanted to be a teacher. Somehow when people grow up, they feel scared to dream big. Randy was also dreaming big when he was a child, “It’s a photo in which I was in my pajamas, leaning on my elbow, and it’s obvious that I was a kid who loved to dream big dreams,” (Pausch p.g25). This quote shows that he is like everybody when they were young. Even though people dream big when they were small, but eventually they lets go their dream; Randy was different. He had faith in himself and strongly believed that dreams could come true. I truly adore his passion and his strong belief.

As we always see in a comedy television show, whenever a child and father were in trouble, they would never tell their mother. So do the author, Randy and his children. “Whenever the kids were with me, we had just two rules: 1). NO whining, 2). Whatever we do together, don’t tell Mom. Not telling Mom made everything we did into a pirate adventure,” (Pausch p.g70). By this quote we can easily tell that he is a man with an adventurous heart and it also shows the part of his innocence.

When people say, “I’m sorry”, were they really sincere? Or were they just saying it without sincerity? This quote is one of my favorite quotes, it says, “When giving an apology, any performance lower than ‘A’ really doesn't cut it,” (Pausch p.g161). Whenever people really feel sorry for you, they will be very sincere and prove to you that they really know what they did wrong, that’s called being sorry. This inspirational quote shows that Randy is a very straight forward person and he would never want to hurt other people’s feeling, also he learns from his mistake. I think this is what everybody must learn: to really say sorry and to truly understand what you did wrong. Therefore, people forget about this important point about being a better person. If we learn this point, I believe it will bring us to next level of our life.

Overall this novel, I have learned many inspirational ideas about life. I have learned how to stay positive and never be afraid of trying something new or dreaming big. I recommend this novel to everybody in this world, because this can help people go through their tough time and life. People can learn more than just believing in themselves but also knowing how to live their own life wisely. I, beyond doubt, love this novel. It helped me improved my personality and taught me how to achieve my goals and letting me realize that anything is possible. I think I can manage my life better than before and feel fearless about things that I want to fight for, like my dream or someone I love, because I know that I should “give myself permission to dream”.