Week 8 Blog: Randy Pausch Last Lecture

Randy Pausch seems like a really good guy, who is trying to make the best of his life. He seems to be funny, which is why I am really happy that this video is closed captions. Now, I will have the opportunity to see and hear what is going on.

He started out talking about childhood dreams. He said that inspiration and permission to dream is huge. I totally agree with him on that. I think it is important to dream because it allows creativity and imaginations. If kids begin to share their dreams right now, imagine how many different images we would get from these kids. It would be really interesting to see exactly how creative one kid can be. Also, each dream has a lesson to make a point, whether it is just a dream or if it is a reality. One lesson Randy learned from his dream of being in the NFL was when he was at football practice with Coach Graham. Randy was one of the smallest kids on the team and Coach was riding him really hard. The assistant coach asked randy if Coach was coming down hard on him and he said yeah. Then the assistant coach told him that it was a good thing because when he is screwing up and nobody is saying anything, then that means they have given up on him. I thought this was really important because we always need someone to keep us on the right track. We need people to show us that they do care and not someone who can care less about what we do.

One of his other dreams was to be a part of Walt Disney Imagineering. He got the chance to work with the Aladdin project with virtual reality. "Walt Disney Imagineering is the master planning, creative development, design, engineering, production, project management, and research and development arm of The Walt Disney Company and its affiliates." http://corporate.disney.go.com/careers/who_imagineering.html "Virtual reality (VR) is a computer-simulated environment, whether that environment is a simulation of the real world or an imaginary world." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_reality Virtual Reality and Imagineering sounds like a fun thing to do.

These two were some of his childhood dreams. He became a professor so he can help enable childhood dreams to other people. One way he did that was by creating a course called Building Virtual World. Basically, different small groups of students work on a virtual project for two weeks. Every two weeks, they will do different projects and work with different students. They create their own little virtual world video. It was really interesting to see the video that one group did, called "hello.World". It was really cool and cute video. I would not mind doing something like that.

He ended with video with a really good wise advice. "It is not about how you achieve your dreams, but it is about how you lead your life." This is really important. Just like the song "The Climb" by Miley Cyrus: Life is a climb. It is not about how fast you get there or what is waiting on the other side. It is about how you get there. Leading your life the right way will help you achieve your dreams. As long as you stay on the right path in your life, dreams will come to you.