Week 8

Dr. Randy Pausch's Video "Last Lecture: Achieving Your Childhood Dreams"

Have you ever known someone to want pity from everyone at all times? Have you ever met someone who uses their weakness or illness to get something from someone such as attention? Those people drive me crazy because they do not hold their head up high and try to be content with what they have been given; instead, they have given up. Dr. Randy Pausch is the complete opposite of those people! During this video, he announces at the beginning of his speech that he is dying of Pancreatic Cancer. Rather than letting his audience have a moment to pity him, he says that is not at all what he wants. He tells his audience that he is in great health--even better than most people in the audience and does push-ups on stage to prove this.

Dr. Pausch takes us on memory lane discussing various dream jobs he had as a child such as being an astronaut, being a professional football player, and being an imagineer. He then jumps to years ahead and leads us to the question "How do we enable the dreams of others?" Being a new teacher, he was astonished at the projects his students presented him with. He told his mentor the students were past the point he had planned on teaching them, and he asked his mentor what he could do. His mentor told him to raise the bar--tell his students they did good but they could do better. I agree with this to an extent. As a student with excellent grades in secondary school, the last thing I ever wanted to hear was that I could do better. This made me feel as if someone was trying to tell me I did not do good enough because I did not put forth enough effort. I believe we should push our children, but when we see they are doing their absolute best, we should congratulate them and let them know.

The part of his lecture about brick walls is neat. He basically tells us the brick walls are not there to keep us out. Instead, they are there to show us exactly how bad we want whatever it is they are keeping us from. If it is really important to us, we should do whatever it takes to break this wall down. This is true in so many instances--relationships, school, and careers. Anything is possible if we set our mind to it, and I truly believe God never shuts one door without opening another. We should fight for what we believe in and what we want if we truly believe in it with all our heart.

Dr. Pausch tells us throughout the video that we should: build the fundamentals, correct students, and encourage students. He tells us that if we do not make our students understand the fundamentals, we cannot expect them to build knowledge on top of it. They must have this foundation. We should correct our students because when no one is correcting them, no one is caring about their success. As educators, we should correct them so that they can better themselves. We should definitely encourage our students. He believes we should always set the bar higher than students set for themselves. These are three extremely important responsibilities of educators.