March 7, 2010

Randy Pausch's Lecture

On my does this man know how to give a speech. He is phenomenal at what he does! I'm not going to lie, when I read that I had to watch an hour long video, I was not to excited about it. Especially because most lectures, in my experience, are boring, but not Randy Pausch! Giving speeches that are interesting is something that I feel is not done nearly enough. I think that dreams and aspirations are what makes the world turn, and MR. Pausch demonstrates this in an amazing way. Before I get into the details of what I enjoyed so much about this speech, I must applaud Mr. Pausch for the creativity, inspirations, and well delivered speech that he presented in this video, and how he gave so much credit to those that inspired him.

The first thing that really struck me when watching this video was when he started talking about his football coach, and how one day that the coach was on him constantly. Because of this, the coach was showing Randy Pausch how he cared about him and his success. I couldn't agree with this more! As a child, I always felt like I was being challenged, and most of the time, I felt it wasn't in a good, positive way. Looking back on it now that I'm older, I realize that the reason that I was being challenge, picked on, pushed, whatever you would like to call it, was not for any negative reasons, but instead it was because those people believed in me, and wanted me to succeed and whatever I attempted. They never gave up on me, and because of that I've been able to succeed at so many wonderful things in my life. I will always and forever be grateful to those who pushed me so hard. As a future teacher, I feel it is my job to inspire and push a student to reach for their dreams no matter how big or small they may seem to be. As a teacher, you become an advocate and a cheerleader for your students, and letting them know that they can do anything they set their minds too is a very important part of that role.

I love how Mr. Pausch didn't obtain all of his goals but he did end up learning more life long lessons from that then he did from succeeding at them all. This is something that I think more children should be exposed too. It's OK to fail, as long as you tried your best and you learned form it. I know some of my greatest life lessons have come from failure. "Experience is what you get when you didn't get what you wanted." Wow!!! How amazing is that quote, and its so true!

The next really profound piece of advice that Mr. Pausch said was, "Brick walls are there for a reason: they let us prove how badly we want things." Like any human, I get very saddened when something that I've been working towards isn't working out the way that I've planned. A lot of times I wonder if the brick walls are there to make me change the path I'm taking because I'm not supposed to be traveling in this particular direction. This has always been a set back for me, wondering if I'm doing the right thing, if I made the right decision. Well, thank goodness I'm extremely stubborn, because I always figure out a way around those brick walls, and usually learn the most when I'm trying to figure out how to hurdle them.

I think that the biggest lesson I learned from watching MR. Pausch's video is to have passion for what you do, believe in what your doing, and do it with pride. It was obvious to me that Mr. Pausch went through a lot of trials and tribulations, especially with his BVW course, but the team work, passion, and creativity that he created in those students and observers is amazing to me and very admirable. Mr. Pausch has an unbelievable outlook on life and education that is outstanding to me. You can tell that he has touched many peoples lives in a very positive way, and as a teacher that's what your number one goal should be. I hope as a teacher, I can make as big of an impact on the lives of the ones that I teach and Mr. Pausch has on the lives of those he has taught. This was a very inspirational vido, and I hopefully will take his outlook on teaching with me, into my classroom