Blog Post #7

Randy Pausch's Last Lecture


Mr. Randy Pausch gave his last lecture at Carnegie Mellon University on September 7, 2011.  At the time Mr. Pausch had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and was only given three to six months of good health. Mr. Pausch has a very humorous and lively spirit and he is not in denial of his illness. 


In Mr. Pausch's last video entitled, Achieving Your Childhood Dreams, Mr. Pausch talked about the lessons he learned while achieving his childhood dreams. A couple of the dreams he talked about were: playing in the NFL and being a Disney Imaginer. Of these lessons, Mr. Pausch got more form his dream of playing in the NFL than any of the others.  Although Mr. Pausch never made it to the NFL, he was able to play football as a child. He talked about how he had a very  old-school coach that taught the players fundamentals. A statement that his assistant football coach told him that Mr. Pausch carried through life was, " When you are doing wrong and nobody is saying anything to you anymore, that means they gave up on you." This is a very inspiring statement that want to instill in m students.  Mr. Pausch explains the importance of experience. He states, "Experience is what you get when you didn't get what you want".  This to me is important because we may not always get the results we want from situations, but as long as we gained experience and knowledge from trying and putting forth effort, we have gained a lot. We will know how to make the situation better the next time.

Next, Mr. Pausch talked bout how becoming an imagineer was the hardest thing for him to do. He was faced with many brick walls, while trying to achieve this dream. Mr. Pausch states that,"Brick walls are there for a reason. They are not there to keep us out but to give us a chance to show how badly we want something." This is true; if we want something bad enough we will not let the brick walls stop us from getting it. We will do everything in our power to knock the walls down or climb over it to reach our goal. Mr. Pausch went on to work with imagineering, but he decided to turned down an offer of being an actual imagineer.  Instead he became an consultant of an imagineer. So in the end he reached all of his dreams.

Mr. Pausch eventually became a professor to help other enable their childhood dreams. He created a course called Building Virtual Worlds at Carnegie Mellon University. The course allowed students to work on 5 projects throughout the semester with different students. Mr. Pausch really enjoyed being a teacher and teaching the students in a field he really enjoyed.