Randy Pausch Last Lecture: Achieving Your Childhood Dreams

WOW! This was an awesome speech. I learned so much. I loved how he put everything out on the table about his wife, kids, and cancer at the begin of the speech. He spoke about his childhood dreams and how he accomplished them. He taught his audience that all things are possible if you have the will to succeed. He talked about specific dreams he had as a child and how he accomplished those dreams. One of his childhood dreams was to experience zero gravity. Through his research work he got the opportunity to ride in Nasa's "Vomit Comet". He encounters his first "brick wall" no faculty is allowed with students he then overcame this by researching ways he could go along so he became" a media journalist". I thought it was important he talked about specific thing she did to over come his "brick walls".

He did not get t o play for the NFL , which was one of his childhood dreams, but he said that the "experience is what you get when you didn't get what you wanted." That is a great point! He introduced the term "head fake" this is when parents put their children in soccer they don't want them to be soccer players, but learn to be team players, aggressive, goal oriented, fair, etc. He also talked about important people that have been involved in his life teachers, professors, bosses, colleagues.

He talked a lot about his biggest childhood dream of being a imagineer at Disney. He got the chance to work on the Aladdin project with a research team and Disney. He was offered a job at Disney , but turned it down and worked consultant work for Disney. He started the building virtual worlds courses at Carnegie Mellon. This course consisted of teams and projects. Their was no "book learning. The course is now global. He is most proud of his Alice project this project uses gaming to teach children.

Randy's most important points came at the end of his speech. He explained how important your parents, teachers, students, and colleagues are as role models. He also said it is important to help others because he is a firm believer in Karma. He told the story of how he didn't get into Carnegie Mellon grad school and he kept calling and had a meeting with "Nico". This shows us how important it is to leap over your "brick walls" with persistence you can achieve what you want. He also explained that it is important to apologize when you screw up. At the end he revealed that this speech was not "Achieving Your Childhood Dreams" but "How to lead our life". Also the speech was not for us , but his children. Their were two head fakes!