Professor Randy Pausch's Last Lecture: "Achieving Your Childhood Dreams"

This week blog topic was about Randy Pausch. A computer science professor who passed away from pancreatic cancer on the 25TH of July, 2008. Professor Pausch inspired many at Carnegie Mellon University when he delivered his last lecture, "Achieving Your Childhood Dreams" . This lecture, come to find out, was a "head-fake" lesson, as Professor Pausch would say, for the real lesson on how to live your life the right way. Personally, I had never heard of Professor Pausch until now, but after watching his lecture, I wish I had.

In his lecture, Professor Pausch starts by telling his audience what his childhood dreams were. And after discussing them with some comical jokes, here and there, and telling how he achieved them, he begins to give pointers or teaching methods, on how others can achieve their dreams. His lessons learned pointers included things like: indirect learning, or "head-fake". This means teaching one way to "secretly" learn the hidden objective. But make learning whatever the objective is fun, which is another method. Students would be more eager to learn if they are engaged and having fun. Another method he discusses is to help students become more self-reflective. Even if they are doing well, push them to be better. And as a teacher, as his next method points out, don't think you know everything. Even teachers can still learn from their students. Professor Pausch also tells us to help others, be loyal, and never give up. No matter how long it may take, just hang in there and it will pay off in the end.

Towards the end of the lecture, Professor Randy Pausch tells his listeners that there are ways to get others to help you. And the first way is by Karma . And I truly agree with him on that. I've always heard the saying, "what goes around, comes around". And that has been true in all situations that I've seen. So you have to be careful with how you treat others and with the things you do. Professor Pausch also lectured on honesty, being earnest, apologizing when you have done wrong by someone, and focusing on others, not just on yourself. He showed a great and loving example of that by wishing his wife a happy birthday towards the end.

I believe we all can benefit from watching professor Pausch's lecture. The title is "Achieving Your Childhood Dreams" but it was to teach a more important lesson. That lesson is how we,as individuals, should be living our lives. This lecture is very inspirational. It's not only for students, or educators, but for all human beings who have or had a dream. I like a lot of the quotes Professor Pausch used, but the main point he was trying to get across to his listeners is "when you do the right thing in life, good things will happen, good things (dreams) will come to you"!