Blog Post 6

This is Randy Pausch's discussion about life and education. The lecture was given at Carnegie Mellon University. He is famous for his work in virtual reality, among other things. The reason he was allowed to give this lecture at such a young age was he was dying of cancer at the time. He only had about six months to live. He gave this lecture in hopes to change the education system for his children. His lecture was about childhood dreams, his and others, and how they can be achieved if you try hard enough. This lecture tells you how to be able to achieve things as a child and as an adult. There are many ways that this lecture made me think in ways that I never had before and these are a few of the reasons.

The most interesting thing, to me, that Randy talked about in this lecture was about building a virtual reality world. The project started with fifty random students being chosen and put into teams that would change after every project. He said one of the things he learned he was told by his mentor. After students turned in work that was way beyond his expectations his mentor said if you don't know where to place the bar that they should strive for don't place one at all. He then told Randy to go to class the next day and tell them that they did good, but he thought that they could do better. What this means to me is that teachers should do everything they can to give their students all of the help they require. Teachers should never hold their students back in any way.

"When you're screwing up and nobody's saying anything to you anymore, that means they're given up."
One of the first things that that Randy talked about was the kind of man his football coach was, and what he expected of his players. His coach expected all of his players to give everything they had when they were playing for him. His coach wouldn't just scream at them for making a mistake. His coach would tell the players the mistakes they made and how to fix them. Randy said that coach Graham was a major role model in his life. Coach Graham taught him that you can criticize someone and still care deeply about them. The educational system needs more people who are willing to take the time to help a child to learn how to properly fix a mistake they made. The easiest way to improve yourself is to have some one that is willing to help you change the things that you can't change yourself.


The last of his subjects that I want to discuss is the ability to apologize. He mentioned a few times in his life that he new he had done something that he needed to apologize for, the most prominent being when he waved the fellowship he had won in the face of the man that would decide if he would be admitted into Carnegie Mellon. He said the look on the interviewer's face immediately told randy that he had just made a mistake. He apologized and said he wasn't trying to talk about the money he had won with the fellowship, he was trying to say how he felt, as one of fifteen winners in America, he felt honored when he won it. In all I found this to be an amusing and informative video.