Randy Pausch The Last Lecture

Quality Over Quantity: Discovering of the True Value of Time

Every year, around 560,000 people in the United States are diagnosed with cancer (“Cancer Facts”). Approximately 53,000 of those people receive the horrific news that they have pancreatic cancer (“Key Statistics”). Randy Pausch, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon University, was one of those people. Even though he was only given three to six months to live, Pausch already had an understanding of the importance of quality of living over quantity of life. He decided to voice his life journey and final moments in his novel, The Last Lecture, to teach one last lesson: Don't waste the time that you have.

Randy Pausch believed that every individual person has childhood dreams

(Pausch 19). However, in the busy reality of life, these dreams are often pushed to the side. In his memoir, Pausch explains how he prioritized fulfilling his childhood dreams throughout his life, proving that even before cancer, he did not waste the time that he had. Some of these dreams consisted of being in zero gravity and working for Disney as an Imagineer (Pausch 19). Pausch really achieved his dreams by never forgetting that they were there. Since he was a computer scientist, he was able to use either his connections or his intelligence to check off each childhood goal. It might be cliché to say “live like you’re dying,” but as Pausch’s experiences affirm, it is more beneficial to stop focusing on the meaningless things in life and to instead take the time to dream like your childhood self.
Pausch uses a lot of rhetorical appeals, borrowing some of Aristotle’s tools of persuasion: ethos and pathos. Ethos, persuasion by character, is used when Pausch builds his credibility as he explains how he achieved his goals and stayed positive in the adversity of battling pancreatic cancer. One of Pausch’s goals, being in zero gravity, was achieved when Pausch was able to take his students at Carnegie Mellon to NASA for a simulation in a plane. Pausch had to bend the rules, however, when he realized that professors were not allowed in the plane. He accompanied his students not as their teacher, but as a journalist, which NASA accepted. He writes in the novel, “I called an official at NASA to ask for his fax number. ‘What are you going to fax us?’ he asked. I explained: my resignation as the faculty advisor and my application as a journalist” (Pausch 32). The importance of achieving childhood dreams is perhaps the point that Pausch stresses the most in The Last Lecture, and he demonstrates his credibility by fulfilling his own goals first. Even when it sometimes took the extra effort of finding a loophole, Pausch was determined to make his dreams a reality. Therefore, in his novel, he can better persuade his audience to live the same way by sharing his experiences through the power of ethos.
Randy Pausch also believed that another essential part of a life well-lived is love.

Randy appeals to the emotions of his readers through the persuasion of pathos, and writes about how he and his wife, Jai, fell in love and had three children. By illustrating how sad and emotional he was about leaving his family so soon due to pancreatic cancer, Pausch makes the tone and mood of the book very emotional as well. He explains that he spent a good amount of his time with his family, but his children were all very young when he was diagnosed. He writes, “I know their memories may be fuzzy. That’s why I’m trying to do things with them that they’ll find unforgettable” (Pausch 192). Fueled by his love for his family, Pausch made the most of the time that he had left with his wife and children. He never moped around his family. Instead, he decided he wanted his family to remember him in his health, so he wrote notes and filmed videos dedicated to his children as memories for the rest of their lives. Pausch knew the importance of being surrounded by love during his battle with cancer. By using the language and appeal of pathos in his memoir, Pausch was able to share this value with his readers. His goal in writing The Last Lecture was to remind people not to waste the time and the life that they have. His important message: find love in any form, because it will make the time you have vastly more

enjoyable.
Randy Pausch set the ultimate example of how to live life, and even though his life was cut short, he was able to pass on his legacy and his lessons through words. He wanted every person to live their life to its fullest potential, regardless of the amount of time they had left to live it. He did not want anybody to make the mistake of wasting his or her life because at the very end, he will only remember its quality.