Blog Post 7

This week we were assigned to watch Randy Pausch's Last Lecture: Achieving Your Childhood Dreams. For those who don't know who Randy Pausch is, he was a professor at Carnegie Mellon University. He then found out he only had six months to live, due to pancreatic cancer. I didn't know Randy personally, but from his speech and the way he acted even though he knew he didn't have much time to live was so inspirational. You really have to admire the guy for not moping around but instead help others achieve their goals.

In his Last Lecture he talks about his childhood dreams and what he did in order to achieve his goals. He had many great points he touched on. My favorite thing he talked about was his take on brick walls. Randy said "Brick walls are not made to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something." To me this is very important, because sometimes I find myself wanting to just give up on some things. If you really want something then you have to climb those "brick walls," when you work for something and put all of your effort into it, it makes it that much sweeter when you finally achieve it.

Another thing I learned from Mr. Pausch was "head fake" learning. A head fake is when you are trying to fool your opponent into thinking you're doing something else. What Pausch meant by head fake learning is that when you are teaching students. You're not just trying to teach them certain subjects, but you're also trying to teach them other skills, other character building qualities. He also talks about when he was younger, his football coach would always be on his back, always challenging him to do more. Mr Pausch said that you shouldn't expect perfection, but when someone is screwing up and you don't correct them, you've given up. He stresses to always challenge your students, always ask for more. The only way people will find out their potential is when they fail. My favorite quote from Mr. Pausch was "Experience is what you get when you don’t get what you want." To me that means, even though sometimes you may not achieve exactly what you wanted, you're one step closer to getting what you want and you have to keep working hard to get it.