Randy Pausch Last Lecture Analysis

After watching Randy Pausch’s speech, the “Last Lecture: Achieving Your Childhood Dreams,” there were three visual aids that he used to guide his speech. One of them was the vest with the arrows sticking out of his back. He explained it was an emblem representing his journey when he was teaching a pioneering course. He said to the audience that if one tries to take on pioneering that they “will get those arrows in the back.” The point he was getting at was the fact that you will face obstacles and at one point in time everything will seem to be going wrong, “you just got to put up with it.” It ties back towards the end of his speech when he gave the advice of “Don’t complain, just work harder,” and I believe that was what he wanted to explain with the arrows in the back because despite the arrows one can power through struggles and succeed.
During his speech, he told the audience that his childhood dream was to be captain Kirk, instead in his adult life he got a chance to meet him. Randy was able to keep a couple of the Star Trek gadgets and show them off to the audience. The message he was sending was that your dreams don’t have to end at childhood. He used these visuals as a way to be an example of someone who never stopped dreaming. A final visual aid Randy used in his speech was the big cake he had made for his wife. Apparently, his wife’s birthday was around the time he was giving that speech and he decided to celebrate her birthday with everybody in the audience. Everyone sang happy birthday to her and she got to blow out the candles. He wanted to tell people to remember to cherish those who are close and important to you and to focus on others. All lessons to help people lead a path to a better