The Last Lecture ch.6

The sixth chapter in “The Last Lecture” is titled Final Remarks. I believe that this has more than one meaning. They are his final remarks in his lecture, the last things he wants to say to the audience, but they are also part of his last remarks for his children. In a way they are a partial goodbye. He takes to the time to talk about each child individually, he describes them then he tells the audience what he sees them doing when they are grown up. But after he tells the audience that he also says that just because he said one will be the social chair of his fraternity doesn’t mean that he has to be the social chair. He wants his kids to be what they want to be, not what they thought their father wanted them to be. He says that as an advisor he had seen lots of students crying because they were doing what their parents wanted them to do instead of listening to themselves. That is very true, I know a few people who picked what college to go to and what to major in because of their parents and not all of them are happy. Then I have a friend who is in her second year like me and has changed her major three times. Because she was waiting for that perfect fit, the thing she could see herself doing. And her parents were behind her every step of the way, which is how more parents need to be. Pausch also takes the time to talk about his wife Jai. HE said that she will have to learn to take time for herself after he is gone. He also says that is she finds happiness through re-marriage then by all means do it. To me that seems like a real selfless thing to do. Sure he could make her feel guilty about it but that is not the kind of man that Pausch is. And that is just a small part of what makes him special. At the end of his lecture Randy had made sure that his last few remarks were prepared on slides just in case he was too emotional to finish the lecture. He went through it all though, and at the very end he asked the audience if they had figured out the head fake yet, the lecture wasn’t for them or for him, but for his kids. And that is very true, when they are older, and can understand everything that happened, they can go back through the tapes he made with them, the letters he wrote them, this book and finally his Last Lecture. Not only will they see what kind of man their father was but they will also get to see how much he cared for them and their mom. This book and that lecture are just pieces of what he is leaving behind for them but they are the big pieces, ones that will allow them to view their father for who he was through their own eyes, not somebody else’s, and that has to be the most important part of all of this.