Brick Walls Part II

There is a lot to be said of facing one’s deepest fear…death, and not rolling over in defeat upon a fatal diagnosis. Randy did the opposite. After being told he only had a few months to live, he grabbed his remaining hours of life with vigor and sincerity, setting out to leave behind a legacy of meaning so that his young children would always know who he was as a person and a father. Randy wanted, no—he needed to be sure that his family would be o.k. after he died. Every waking minute was spent in some facet in seeking treatments that would extend his time or on planning for his family. After leaving Carnegie Mellon shortly after his diagnosis, he returned to a standing room only crowd in order to deliver an extremely moving speech he called, “The Last Lecture.” Thankfully for all of us, Carnegie Mellon University captured this lecture on video. What was originally intended to be filmed for Randy’s young children, someone on the inside saw the important qualities of his message for all of us, prompting that feed to be put on the Internet. You can find his lecture easily by searching for Randy Pausch on Google. Grab some quiet space and a few tissues, and watch in duration what Randy’s legacy bestows in the hour plus video. It is worth every minute.

For those of you who are not plugged into the Internet, there is good news. Last year, while shopping in Sam’s, I rounded the book aisle and pleasantly discovered that “The Last Lecture” was now available in book form. After watching the lecture and reading the book, I highly recommend that one experiences both forms of media. As we all know, book form is always better, longer and full of more information than any film. It is important to note that Randy hired a writer to transform his lecture into a book so as not to take precious time away from his family. The written version will tear you up, but leave you feeling so very fortunate to have been given an opportunity to know this man--a colleague, and his rich insight on life. What’s more is that we can be sure that the purchase of this book will help maintain the future of his children on a course of stability.

Without giving away his message, I will tell you a few things that he has left me with. Randy would profess that it is never too late to embrace life, and encourages each of us to extract life’s greatest gifts—spending time with those you love and living out your dreams. To dream of becoming or doing, is possible to achieve. Randy would insist that dreams are not and should not remain merely imaginative, but goals worth pursuing. Randy demonstrates to us that children are not entities with expendable feelings. They are precious, impressionable beings that soak up everything around them—for it is through experiences with others that they find pieces of who they will become. These are only a few of the many enlightening messages Randy passes on. He wants us to get it so that we can live a more fulfilling life.

What brick walls do your students face in life? With the economy doing so poorly, stress is surely holding the reins of many lives right now. Not to mention that America is in two wars simultaneously. Times are not easy here in America. Many people have lost their jobs, homes have gone into foreclosure, and jobless people are hard pressed to find work. For many of our students, returning to school was an option that helped make ends meet thanks to financial aid and student loans. So, when a student comes to you and states that things are really tough in life, you have a choice: to listen and help the student succeed, or to stick to the rules and say, “I’m sorry, but rules are rules.” Sometimes brick walls are manned by people who have the power to make them scalable…how high are the brick walls in your classroom?

I highly recommend that you investigate why so many people have followed Randy’s progress in the past year. Get to know him. Laugh. Cry. Question his profundity. But most of all, learn. Randy lived in example. He walked the walk and talked the talk. Thank you to his wife Jai for sharing with us something in life that made each day more meaningful.