Blog Post 7

Randy Pausch's Last Lecture

This assignment is 1 day late because my daughter (that just turned 1) got a virus that made her unable to keep any food or fluids down for 3 days. Needless to say, as a young first-time parent, this was terrifying. To make matters worse, I contracted the virus and have spent the past 2 days vomiting uncontrollably. So with that said, I apologize my assignment is late. It won't happen again.


This video was good for multiple reasons. It taught you valuable life lessons while making you think, "What would I do if I knew I was about to die?" That to me is an incredible position to be in. You know you are about to die, so what do you do with your life? How would you live like you were dying? He was surprisingly light humored for someone with a deathwish. I hope that if I were ever in his shoes, I could leave as gracefully as he.

Randy always wanted to be an Imagineer at Disney. My dad has an office in Orlando so I must say I am no stranger to Disney or it's magic. I think one of the most valuable lessons I took away from him has to do with his rejection. All the schools and programs he wished to attend, he got rejected. But for Randy, that was never the end. He had his dreams and he wasn't giving up on them. For me, my mindset would have been, "Well I got rejected from that school, so it's out of the picture. What other schools do I want to apply to?" But not Randy. He achieved his dreams, but that doesn't mean that there weren't people that stood in his way. I liked when Randy said, "Walls were built to keep the people out who didn't want something bad enough." I have a totally different mindset than that. Hearing his perspective, enabled me to rethink a lot of things and made me realize that if something doesn't work out the first time, I shouldn't give up. I should just try harder.

I also like when he said, "Be good at something, it makes you valuable". You don't ever really think about it that way, but he is right. In order to make the world go round, we need people to be good at different things. Together, we make up all the pieces to create the whole picture-the puzzle. But in order to be needed, you have to hold a piece to the puzzle. Whether that means trade school, college, or grad school you need to be specialized in something. Randy got the highest education he could with the mindset that he could not possibly get rejected frm Disney. But, he still did. Imagine how that must have felt? But he didn't give up. Eventually he went on to work on a project with them and was later offered a job. Surprisingly, he turned it down but agreed to work in the lab 1 day a week. He went on to do so for 10 years.

Randy then started a program at Carnegie. He had a curriculum that looks a lot like EDM310's. It was a project based course with 4 major projects. What he really achieved through this program was teaching these students to do something really hard, and have fun doing it. He actually taught his students so well, that he didn't have a problem finding a replacement for himself. He found someone that he believed in when no one else did. Randy went out on a limb for this guy. In the end, Randy said his successor was better than him and would go on to take the program to do bigger and better things. That shows humility to be able to make a statement like that about something so near and dear to your heart.

I took away from this video that no dream is too big. No wall is too high-You just have to want it bad enough. Never lose your childlike wonder-it's a good thing. Don't let others bring you down and most importantly, one person CAN make a difference and change the world.