As If It Were Her Last

The question is simple: if you had one lecture left to give, what would it be?

When Randy Pausch took the stage at Carnegie Mellon University in September 2007 to give his last lecture, the computer science professor told the audience to achieve their dreams.

For Pausch, who had pancreatic cancer and less than a year to live, the moment marked an ending, but his legacy carries on — with the Last Lecture. Although he said later that the lecture was really for his kids, millions of people have watched it online or heard about it, been influenced by it, and found value in it.

Doe West, a College of Arts & Sciences lecturer in psychology, will give the first Last Lecture, a new annual series sponsored by the Undergraduate Psychology Association. “For our inaugural event, it was pretty much a no-brainer,” says Timothy Kelly (CAS’09), association president. “She is an incredible professor and her experiences are unique and amazing.”

Pausch’s reflection was called Achieving Your Childhood Dreams. West, who likes a little salt with her sugar, offers Achieving Your Adulthood Realities.

“Around the next corner, there could be a dragon. But the light at the end of the tunnel is not necessarily a train coming, either,” says West. “I want people to be enchanted with the last lecture and pursue a collective dream, to have a place of opportunity.”

West takes on the dragon at 7 p.m. tonight at the Photonics Center. BU Today caught up with her for a preview.

BU Today: What’s it like to be giving a last lecture? Is it a bit morbid?
West: It blew my socks off — talk about an honor. Students everywhere have been impacted with hearing last lectures. For me, my students continually bring me to my knees, and this might be my chance to do the same. It’s the ultimate reciprocity.

How did you come up with the title Achieving Your Adulthood Realities?
I realized when people said to me, “What if this is your last lecture?” that I view every lecture as my last. I’ve danced with the dragon in my life, and I’ve always lived as though every moment was my last moment. So my approach has been, what if it’s the last thing they’ll ever hear, coming from someone they know cares for them. Randy Pausch came from the view of learning that he had pancreatic cancer, focusing on a loving family, helping people achieve their personal dreams. My life has been almost an antithesis, with family violence and abuse. My message is, okay, it’s time to get back to the collective dream.

What collective dream?
I’m an old hippie, but we had it wrong. We got it right that love can change the world, but wrong in that love is not enough, because there has to be hard work and sacrifice, too. I’m afraid of where we are, what my young men and women are struggling with when I meet them in class.

What do you see students struggling with?
I see young men and women coming to college without the basics of who they are. Their self-esteem is very low. They don’t have solid dreams, don’t have a place in society. They come here and get overwhelmed by coldness, a loss of hope, and a lack of living skills. I’ve been teaching since 1982 at the university level, and the same passion and intelligence is there, but the link between mind and heart is not.

They haven’t learned the “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” mentality?
Maybe they haven’t learned to stop pulling up alone. There’s a lack of society, a lack of unity. We are a society of voyeurs and gawkers. Britney Spears went off the deep end and no one stopped harassing her — in fact, were laughing at her. There could be no paparazzi if people didn’t feed those sharks.

How do you refocus your students when they are surrounded by those types of images?
If we’re uncomfortable enough with how it is, we’ll mindfully choose little changes, as immediate as looking at your relationship with yourself, with your roommates. If you’re tired of not looking at people and only accidentally bumping into people on the sidewalk, then be the change. Take back your sense of power. And the reason I have hope is that I have still have contact with past students, and they consistently say that the message works, and they see others in a different way.

I’ve had so much feedback where students say, “No one ever believed in me like this.” This is not a pipe dream; this is something I’ve seen.

As a teacher, how do you find the energy to give back?
I came from a house of violence — a house with mental illness, physical violence, abandonment. But I was able to walk away from that. I went through violence and became disabled at 22. You could either become a victim, or you find out that in spite of yourself, in the darkness of winter, you find summer inside.

I want students to understand that here is an opportunity, to stop being comfortable, and to stop being afraid to fail. I’ve made terrible decisions, but as they say, a hero is just someone who was braver five minutes longer.

What is a typical day like for you?
Multitasking beyond what most people would think of. I’m teaching this wonderful course, which is a favorite of the students, but an intense, horrific course in many ways — a seminar on family violence. I’m also doing a one-year visiting professorship at Assumption College. Then on weekends, I’m the pastor at a nondenominational church.

My visiting professorship is done at the end of April, and I don’t have a next job lined up. So by this summer I could be jobless and homeless. I could either lie down and die and not give a damn about the impact of my life, or I figure out how to keep my life going. A lot of us in America are facing a crisis right now.

At 57 that’s challenging, but millions are facing the same thing. And it’s actually that sense of community that helps — I have friends in New Jersey and Connecticut saying, “Doe, if you need a place to stay, just come.”

I’m Native American, and I was raised tribal. Living in white society, I easily could get lost. If we could just be there for each other, I think everything could be better. I’m trying to plant the seeds for this generation of men and women to stop being media-following lemmings. We’re becoming a sadder and sadder group of people. But that’s enough. Let’s reorient.

I want people to be enchanted with the last lecture and pursue a collective dream. Instead of lusting after things that kill their spirits, I want them to be whole and healthy again.

The Last Lecture begins at 7 p.m. tonight, April 8, at the Photonics Center, 8 St. Mary’s St., Room 206. Admission is free, but a small donation for local domestic violence shelters is welcome. Doors open at 6:30 p.m. For more information, contact the Undergraduate Psychology Association at ugradpsy@bu.edu, or click here.

Kim Cornuelle can be reached at kcornuel@bu.edu.