Choices Essay The author Randy Pausch shows his love for his family and his happiness towards people who surround him in his life. Pausch shows how important choices are in showing your family your love and happiness throughout the hardest times in his life. Also, Pausch expresses he is happy towards complete strangers and the people he interacts/surrounds himself with. The memoir The Last Lecture shows us that our choices are important in showing others and your family that you are happy and loving life. One of the most important choices we can make in our life is choosing to spend time with our family and in being happy. Randy Pausch in The Last Lecture expresses this point perfectly. Pausch chose to take his family to Disneyworld, which is a place him and his family both love and enjoy. Pausch still treated his family no differently than when he did not know he had pancreatic cancer. Throughout Pausch’s last six months he stayed completely optimistic and was never gloomy or depressed when around his family or friends. Although Pausch could have been depressed “At the time, I already had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, but I was optimistic.”(1) Pausch expresses that even though he is now informed that he had pancreatic cancer, he still is the same man as before and will still continue to be optimistic and happy every day of his life. If you work towards being something you will achieve it eventually and you will be able to remain optimistic in Randy Pausch’s case (37). According to The Art Of Making A Good Decision many people have trouble making the right choice due to their lack of knowing their priorities. In Randy Pausch’s case he chose the right choice and spent his last six months loving and showing his care for his family and enjoying every day he had left to the fullest. Randy Pausch in The Last Lecture shows many examples in which he chose to show his family he is happy despite his illness. Another one of the most important choices we can make is showing the people who surround you and who you interact with that you are happy. Pausch chose to give lectures to hundreds of people; showing his life experiences and explaining how he spent the rest of his life before cancer got him. Randy Pausch showed his audience how great his life still was even though he is diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Pausch expresses his caring of others happiness and curiosity in many individuals:
Lately, I’ve been making a point of speaking to people who lost their parents when they were very young. I want to know what got them through the hard times and what keepsakes have been most meaningful to them (194).
Pausch reached out to kids to tell them to stay positive throughout hard times in their life and that it will eventually become easy enough to get over. Randy Pausch in The Last Lecture showed multiple examples in which he expressed his happiness to other people around him. Throughout Randy Pausch’s last six months of being healthy, in my opinion he showed his love for his family and friends and did enjoy every day that he had left. He expressed his love and care for his family in many different ways and it was almost unreal that a man that was just diagnosed with pancreatic cancer could be so optimistic and happy every day. Also, when Pausch held those lectures and spoke to hundreds of people about his goals throughout his life, was just a remarkable thing for him to express to complete strangers that he did not even know.
You May Also Find These Documents Helpful
-
Bill is a 68 year old male with two grown children in their 40’s. He is a widow living on his own in Cambridgeshire. Bill runs his own business as an electrician, he is also a dog owner leading an active social life. Bills children visit on the weekends, but they have their own families to tend to. Recently, Bill has been complaining of stomach pain but neglected to report it to his doctor. After falling down the stairs and breaking his leg, he was admitted to the hospital and chose to disclose his stomach issues. After some tests Bill was found to have a colon tumour, which was removed via surgery. The surgery is to be followed up with a treatment plan of chemotherapy. His leg is now out of the cast but it still causes him pain. Any surgery, any medical issues mental or physical have both short and long term effects on overall quality of life, in this essay I am going to discuss how Bills issues have affected his overall wellbeing. …
- 1370 Words
- 4 Pages
Better Essays -
Mandler wrote this book to help his students as well as others across the country write an effective story about themselves. “I had to do something to guide people. It’s really in the spirit of alleviating much of the stress that students feel in creating an essay that I wanted to do this book,” said Dr. Mandler.…
- 450 Words
- 2 Pages
Satisfactory Essays -
Being considered the first Chicano novel written, Pocho tells a vulgar coming-of-age story of a first generation Chicano (American born Mexican) boy, Richard Rubio. Richard, like many first generation Chicanos is faced with an integral question: to assimilate to the American culture, or preserve his Mexican heritage? The novel tells a story where Richard experiences cultural assimilation that drastically changes his beliefs, but frequently hints at relapsing to his father’s ways. Ultimately, Richard Rubio comes full circle to essentially relive the life of his father, Juan Rubio. Because of this, Richard falls victim to succumbing to the forces of tradition, culture, and society. Richard exemplifies this through his failure to fulfill his academic…
- 1498 Words
- 6 Pages
Better Essays -
Did you know that over 40,000 children have to go through cancer treatments a year? Out of those 40,000, 12% of children with cancer will not make it. When a child is diagnosed with cancer, it affects many people who care about them and changes how they feel towards this child. This relates to Steven Alper, a character in the novel Drums, Girls and Dangerous Pie, whose brother is diagnosed with leukemia. Throughout the novel, Steven’s feelings toward his brother, Jeffrey, change over the course of time that his brother has cancer. Jeffrey has to go through chemotherapy and is at CHOP at least once a week for his treatments. Steven’s mom is not home a lot because she is with Jeffrey and making sure he is okay, while his dad is working and worrying…
- 1650 Words
- 7 Pages
Powerful Essays -
• About 1.3 Americans are diagnosed with skin cancer each year and melanoma accounts for 4 percent of those cases.…
- 2174 Words
- 9 Pages
Powerful Essays -
What would you do if you found out you were dying of cancer? Would you able to make jokes and laugh it off as though it were nothing? Would your humor be a way of denying the truth? People use humor in different ways. In "The Approximate Size of My Favorite Tumor", Sherman Alexie tells how one man tries to use humor to deny the reality of his terminal disease. He shows how humor can be taken too far. This story demonstrates how humor can destroy one part of your life as it helps you cope with another.…
- 689 Words
- 3 Pages
Good Essays -
What’s that old saying? Laughter is the best medicine? John Green, of all people, certainly understands that. The Fault in Our Stars is a rather tragic tale of two young lovers, both of whom are suffering from fatal and debilitating illnesses. They meet each other at a Support Group –where neither wants to be- and there begins the wild, mad ride that is: “Hazel and Augustus.” As Green explains in his Author’s Note, and again in the Afterward, this is a book of fiction – a book of realistic circumstances and realistic characters, but wholly imagined. Even the drugs and treatments mentioned are created by the author; all this to say – this is not a story about cancer or the treatment of cancer: it is a story about life and living. This story is about being a parent and a friend. It is about being sick and about being healthy. It is about the many different ways that many different people deal with their own grief – some coming out stronger and more focused than they could have imagined, while others sink deep into a dark and dangerous depression that is nearly impossible to escape. This book is about freedom – the chance we all have to live life the way we want to live it, no matter how short and painful that life may be. Circumstances happen, but they do not define us; what defines us is how we meet those circumstances – and that is what we will be remembered by.…
- 568 Words
- 3 Pages
Good Essays -
An underlying assumption of the literature on terminal illness is the belief that “facing a life threatening illness is a life crisis that intensifies the individual’s search for meaning” (Mcgrath, 2003). When making the overarching statement that all individuals search for meaning in their lives, it is important to acknowledge that this meaning and significance may be found in different ways. One’s reaction to having a terminal illness also differs based on the stage of development. This paper will examine how a terminal illness affects a person at adolescence and at middle adulthood and what it means to each of them, taking into account other variables such as gender, culture, and religiosity.…
- 3425 Words
- 14 Pages
Powerful Essays -
A typical day for me is spent depending on how I’m feeling. If I am feeling well I will go for a walk either around the neighborhood or at a nearby lake. If not, I will spend the day resting at home and spend time with my family and friends. (Question 2). I no longer have a job because my health does not permit it. (Question 3). I have lost most of my hair and I am quite thin due to the cancer treatments I have undergone (Balducci 2003). In my trying to stay active I find myself out in the public eye frequently. Most people around me display other-oriented communication. Because cancer is a subject that people either know someone who suffered from it, or suffered from it themselves, it enables people to display empathy in it’s highest form. Breast cancer is the most common form of cancer in this country (Bellenir 2009). It is a subject that people think about and are conscious of it being a possibility in their own future. See others display empathy and other-oriented communication is a big part of my everyday life.…
- 830 Words
- 4 Pages
Good Essays -
With, this came obsticles that would push her to the limit, considering that, staying healthy was her biggest concern. Chemotherapy made that a tough task, food tasted bland, and made her feel sick through most of the treatment yet, she stayed strong through the whole thing. This was delightful for me, and everyone else, knowing that she would be with us for more days to come. The recovery days of treatment went smoother, and now she is cancer free. Bringing an end to the story, my aunt has shed light on how unpredictable life’s battles could be. When looking back on this event, it wasn’t just my Aunt that learned a lesson, the rest of the family learned to value each bother…
- 603 Words
- 3 Pages
Good Essays -
The patient chosen for this essay is a sixty year old man. This patient was one of the palliative care patients that the team of district nurses I was allocated to work with in my community placement care for. The patient has terminal liver cancer. The patient lives with his wife whom is his main carer. The district nurses had to visit him every day of the week. The patient had a syringe driver on situ which needed to be filled with a new dose of medication every 24 hours. Also the extension set needed to be changed to the other side of the patient’s body when the side it was on became sore. The main care needs for the patient were to palliate physical symptoms and maintain independence for as long and as comfortably as possible.…
- 3442 Words
- 14 Pages
Powerful Essays -
A terminally ill elderly looking ghostly pale looks into one’s eyes and all one can see is the despair of their hopeless life and the excruciating pain they are going through, just begging for the afterlife. As they reach out for the hand of a close loved one, their icy cold touch sends a shiver down their spine, creating a sense of shame for keeping their elder dangling by a thread as opposed to letting them finally rest in peace.…
- 1203 Words
- 5 Pages
Better Essays -
Randy Pausch was a professor at Carnegie Mellon University who discovered that he had pancreatic cancer and was given 3-6 months to live. He is known for developing and telling a speech he called “The Last Lecture” in which he explains his accomplishments in life which include his childhood dreams. His positive, humorous, and inspirational persona made watching this speech a learning experience, as well as a pleasure to watch.…
- 430 Words
- 2 Pages
Satisfactory Essays -
You would think a man dying of cancer would not be so happy and willing to spend the last few months of his life giving a lecture. But, Randy Pausch, who has 10 tumors in his liver, does not want people to pity him for having cancer. Rather, he wants to teach people how to follow their childhood dreams. Looking at the seven elements of communication we see how he is so effective in his last lecture.…
- 1013 Words
- 5 Pages
Good Essays -
Carnegie Mellon University computer science professor Randy Pausch delivered a highly memorable and inspirational presentation in 2007, entitled “Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams.” I thought it was emotional, powerful and gripping, as was the book about it, The Last Lecture.…
- 1041 Words
- 5 Pages
Good Essays