The Last Lecture
Randy Pausch, Jeffrey Zaslow
My dad’s dear friend gifted me this book for my wedding a decade ago. A few tries and an audiobook later I finally finished this book this weekend. Thoroughly enjoyed the sheer number of life advice gems disguised as a dying man’s preparation for his “last lecture”. Here are some quotes I loved from the book
Never make a decision until you have to.
He'd also warn me that even if I was in a position of strength, whether at work or in relationships, I had to play fair. \"Just because you're in the driver's seat, doesn't mean you have to run people over\".
\"How many men are on the football team at a time?\". \"And how many are touching the football at any given time?\". \" Right!. So we are going to work on what those other twenty-one guys are doing.\"
When you're screwing up and nobody says anything to you anymore, that means they have given up on you.
The brick walls are there for a reason.They're not to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something.
If you can find your footing between two cultures, sometimes you can have the best of both worlds.
If you want something bad enough, never give up (and take a boost when offered).
Sometimes all you have to do is ask, and it can lead to all your dreams coming true.
One rule in our house is that you may not ask one-word questions.
It can be a very disruptive thing for parents to have specific dreams for their kids. As I see it, a parent's job is to encourage kids to develop a joy for life and a great urge to follow their own dreams. The best we can do is to help them develop a personal set of tools for the task.
Having seen so many students go through my classrooms, I've come to know that a lot of parents don't realize the power of their words. Depending on a child's age and sense of self, an offhand comment from Mom or Dad can feel like a shove from a bulldozer.