Blog Post 7

"Randy Pausch: The Last Lesture"
To start of this lecture, Pausch tells us about the ten tumors he has in his liver. He is also very quick to tell us that this is not what he is going to talk about. The basis of the video was achieving your childhood dreams. Randy Pausch shows us his list of childhood dreams. When I first saw them my first thought was there is no way these can be achieved. Well I quickly found out I was wrong. One of his first goals was to be in zero gravity. The opportunity opened up for this to happen. He said that everything was running smoothly until he hit the first brick wall. Usually when people hit brick walls they take that as a sign to give up. Not in Pausch's case. He said that "brick walls are not to keep us out, but to show us how bad we want something." I have never thought of a brick wall like this, but it is true. In most cases people do not give up, but try to find a way around it.
Randy Pausch goes down his list of childhood dreams. One of them was to be Captain Kirk. He goes on to say that he knew that would not happen, so it changed to meeting Captain Kirk. Pausch tells us that it is okay for dreams to change because you do realize some of them cannot be achieved. He also tells us what is so great about meeting Captain Kirk was the fact that Captain Kirk came to Randy Pausch. Pausch says there is nothing more rewarding than having your childhood hero come to you for something you have done. I thought that was very neat. I also thought it was good to hear that dreams can change, but you should never give up on achieving those dreams.
Randy Pausch kept my attention from the beginning of this video. I wasn't excited about having to watch this video because I thought it was going to be full of how he was battling cancer. I definitely was wrong and I am glad I watched this video. I have learned many different things from it. I loved that Pausch was in a good spirits throughout the video. It made me think of how often I am in a bad mood over the smallest things and I let that affect my entire day.
From this video I learned that no dream is to small to achieve. Do not let brick walls hold you back from anything. Also brick walls can be made of flesh and are very easy to knock down. Pausch also realized that some of his dreams were not actually what he wanted. After working with Disney Imagineers for a while, Paush realized that that was something he was not wanting to do. But like he said being a professor allowed him "to have his cake and eat it too."
Pausch also talks about his course on Building Virtual Worlds. That was also very interesting. He had someone come on stage and show how the virtual world worked. That was very interesting to watch. At the end of this video, Randy Pausch comments that he could not have achieved his dream without the help of his parents. This is very true. I would not be where I am today without the help of my parent. Pausch achieved many great things. Pausch inspired many people with the Last Lecture. He talks about one student who wanted to work on Star Wars movies, and he was able to work on three of them. I think more professors should be like Randy Pausch. He held my attention and was great at what he did. I hope I can be remembered like he is today.