Blog Post #6

For my Blog Post #6 I had to watch Randy Pausch Last Lecture . Randy Pausch is giving his Last Lecture to a auditorium full of people at Carnegie Mellon University. In this video he is telling the viewers that you are capable of achieving your dreams. There may be "Brick Walls", but they are not there to keep us out. Randy tells us that they are there to prove to ourselves how bad we really want something. Randy Pausch was diagnosed with tumors and given only months to live. He was a professor at Carnegie Mellon University and was a true inspiration to all.
In this video Randy explains all of his childhood memories and the ones that really left an impact on his life. Some of his childhood dream included; Being in zero gravity, Playing in the NFL, Authoring a article in the World Book Encyclopedia, Being Captain Kirk, Winning stuffed animals, and Being a Disney imagineer. One of those dreams that did leave an impact on his life was football. Randy stated that he got more from his football dream than any of the other things that he did accomplish. He could thank his coaches for that. He had an intimidating coach that played at Penn State. Randy remembers his coach riding him real hard at practice one day, he didn't know why till someone said that it was a good thing. When coaches see you doing something wrong and they don't say anything, that means they have given up. Critisism can be a good thing sometimes.
In his first year at Carnegie Mellon, he started a class called Building Virtual Worlds. This class brought together 50 students from Art, Design, Drama, and CS. They would spilt up in different teams and build Virtual Worlds. These students the first time shocked Dr. Pausch. All of the projects were amazing. He came back the next day and told them that the projects were good, but they could do better. How would you take that if your teacher said that? What Randy saw was that his student's projects ended up getting better and better. That example goes back to critics. The students saw that Dr. Pausch was pushing them to think outside the box and to push themselves.
So who helps you achieve your dreams? It can be anyone from a teacher to a friend. Randy states that he had a lot of support from his parents as well as Andy Van Dom. Randy was working for Andy while he was in college. He was the one who influenced Randy to go to Graduate School. Personally I have a huge support system to help me achieve my dreams. This would all come from my mom. She has been there with me through everything. She always let me try new things and let me experience things that some children are never able to do. I think that is why I am so excited about being a teacher. I will be able to share all of my life experiences with the children and be able to understand and know what their dreams are. That way I am able to help them achieve those dreams. As many people have done for me, I am ready to push my students to do great things because I care.
I really enjoyed watching this video by Randy Pausch. It was a real eye opening video and one that I will never forget. I cant wait to be able to start teaching and help students achieve their dreams!