Summary of the Last Lecture

Abby Coleman

Mr. Greer

Dual Credit English 3

12 August 2018

Summary of the Last Lecture

        Section 1: In this section, Randy starts talking about the difficult events that he has in store. He knows he only has a couple months left and he wants to leave this as his legacy, His wife disagrees and doesn’t want him to do the lecture because she believes it is taking time away from them being together. While at the doctor, Randy realizes he has accomplished almost all of his childhood dreams. Self-esteem and dignity became his main motivation through all the ups and downs of this illness. The end of this section is the beginning of his lecture where he includes an image of his CT scan that shows his tumors. However, he gets up and does push-ups in front of everyone to prove he isn’t just a guy with cancer.

        Section 2: This section is all about achieving your childhood hood dreams. Randy starts out by talking about how even though his parents were tough on him, he believed he won the parent lottery. The first dream he talks about is his dream of being able to float which eventually came true when Randy and his class get invited to Houston to try out the zero-gravity experience. The second dream he brings up is his childhood dream of playing in the NFL. Although he never made it to the NFL, football and his coach motivated and molded him into the person he grew up to be. Being able to write an article for the World Book Encyclopedia was another one of his dreams. Randy’s parents bought the encyclopedia for him and his sister when they were little because they believed the best gift was knowledge which motivated him to one day write an article for them. Another dream he had was being Captain Kirk from Star Trek because he was a great role model and showed great leadership qualities for young boys. Stuffed animals played a huge role in his childhood and during his last lecture he gave out some of his stuffed animals and ironically a girl in the audience that also had cancer picked “the elephant in the room.” His final childhood dream was becoming a Walt Disney Imagineer and after many years of waiting that dream came true. One thing Randy proves throughout this section is that nothing is impossible and is you work hard enough, your childhood dreams are bound to come true.

        Section 3: Throughout this section, Randy learns many different lessons during his life and has some crazy adventures. Some of the lessons he learns throughout his life are that people are more important than things, to live day by day and not worry about the future, not everything that is broken needs to be fixed, and no matter how bad things are, you can always make them worse. Most people now days worry about the future and always having the new electronics and trying to fix everything that is broken, Randy shows throughout this section that we don’t need any of that stuff to be happy in life and to be the best version of ourselves that we can be. The lessons that he learned came from many adventures he has to endure during his life. All the adventures he went through and all the lessons he learned through his life made Randy the person who grew up to be.

        Section 4: It is fun fulfilling your childhood dreams but it is more fun helping others achieve their dreams. Randy talks about how he manages his time and gives examples of how he can help others, his goals for his students, and most importantly helping others achieve their childhood dreams. Randy’s number one goal for his students was to help them learn how to judge themselves rather than having someone tell them. He had a student in his class that was exactly like him in college and he wanted to be like the professor that helped him through everything. Randy helped many people throughout his life and changed the outlook people have on life.