Sunday, March 7, 2010

Week 8

Achieving Childhood Dreams

I watched Randy Pausch 's lecture called Last Lecture: Achieving Your Childhood Dreams. Pausch is a computer programmer who talks about the importance of achieving your childhood dreams. He doesn't want you to just stop there, Pausch wants you to help others achieve their dreams as well.
Pausch began his lecture in an odd way by saying that he has liver cancer and is going to die, but also says for us not to feel sorry for him. He continues telling you about the child hood dreams he had, which include; playing in the NFL, playing in zero gravity, being Captain Kirk, and being a Disney Imagineer. The first section of his lecture is him describing to the audience how he achieved all his dreams. He ran into walls, but he says that walls are there for a reason; they let us prove how badly we want things. If everything we wanted was just handed to us we wouldn't appreciate the things we do achieve. Now where's the fun in that?
The next part to Pausch's lecture was about how you can help others achieve their dreams. He told about when he first started his course called building virtual worlds. When the students turned in their first projects he was blown away and didn't know what to do next. He called his mentor and he told Pausch to just say that they can do better. Pausch said this was the best advice. That he couldn't put a bar for the students to reach because he didn't know how high they could go. If someone tells you that you can do better your more likely to try even harder and will do more than you ever thought possible.
The last part to Pausch's lecture was Lessons Learned. He went through and listed all the little things that are important. Some of these were: never lose the child like wonder, get people to help you, tell the truth, respect authority while questioning it, be earnest, apologize, focus on others, find the best in everyone no matter how long you have to wait for them to show it.
At first I thought this lecture was way too long, but in the end I'm glad i watched it. It is very inspirational. He was able to accomplish everything he wanted as well as paved the way for others to do the same. I hope I can say the same one day...

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