The Last Lecture

Ok I am a little behind on this one, but I just got around to reading "The Last Lecture" by Randy Pausch. If you don't know the background, Randy was a professor at Carnegie Mellon University. Carnegie Mellon had a lecture series which at one time was called the Last Lecture. The premise being that the professors would cover what they would say in an hour's time, as if this was the last lecture they would be giving. Professor Pausch was scheduled to give the lecture in September of 2007, in August before the talk, he learned that the pancreatic cancer he had been receiving treatment for had returned and he in fact only had months to live, so this truly would be his "last lecture".

I have avoided this book, because I love to read for one of two reasons. I either want to educate myself about a topic or I want to be entertained. I did not expect this book to be particularly educational as it is 206 very short and small pages. Given that I knew the outcome, he dies, I don't consider depressing books to be entertaining. Also, I resisted, because my father died of pancreatic cancer a little over 13 years ago, so I knew I would not like this book. Everyone who did read it told me I should and I finally caved in, thinking I will just put it down if it is too bad. I even kept a back up paperback from John Grisham close by.

I am here to admit that my friends and family were right. This is a great book. He covers any number of vignettes of his life experiences in very entertaining writing and most of the stories are there to convey some moral or life lesson learned.

Obivious from the reading the book, he is a huge fan of Disney and I particularly like one of the business lessons he conveyed in the book called the $100,000 salt and pepper shakers. When Pausch was 12, his parents took he and his 14 year old sister to Disney World. They were allowed to go off for a period by themselves (this was in the early 70's, you let kids go off by themselves back then) and during that time the kids purchased a $10 set of salt and pepper shakers to give their parents. Soon after leaving the store Pausch dropped the bag breaking the shakers. An adult saw them totally distraught over the loss and suggested they return to the store and see if they could get another set. They were hesitant knowing it was their fault and that the store owed them nothing. (remember 1970's, maybe 12 year olds were more honest and responsible back then also) They did in fact return to the store and the clerk there gave them a new set and even apologized for not wrapping it up better.

After handing the gift to their parents, they told them the story about how they had broken the original shakers and the clerk at the store had given them a new one. Pausch's father worked with ESL kids in their hometown in Maryland. He was so impressed with how the clerk at Disney handled the situation with his children, that for the next 20 years he took groups of his ESL kids down to Disney World every year, spending well over $100,000 with the park.

Pausch's point and one I wonder also is how many companies would empower their lowest level employees to spend $10 to fix a problem that was not even the company's responsiblity. Yet Disney did and it paid off huge dividends for them.

So get the book and read it. It is well written, very easy to read and I find that I agree with pretty much all of his life lessons.