Blog Assignment #8

     From the video Randy Pausch Last Lecture: Achieving Your Childhood Dreams, Randy Pausch gave a lot of great advice that can be useful for teaching and learning. He talked about different advice to help to remember and to help in the work profession and for everyday life.

      In the video Dr. Pausch started with his childhood dreams, how he achieved or did not achieve them, and how we should not lose sight of our dreams. He says that it is good to have dreams, but you should have specific dreams like how he wanted to experience zero gravity and not necessarily be an astronaut. In his childhood dream section he mentions how we should have something to bring to the table, and that will help for you to be more welcomed. He wanted to play in the NFL, never happened, but talks about the more important things of the sports such as team work and commitments which is something that is used a lot in the work field. Dr. Pausch makes a statement about a time when his coach was telling him that even though someone was hounding him to do better it just showed that person never gave up on him. This can apply to the school field since even though a child may be messing up, just not helping them is not the answer.

     After talking about his childhood dreams he talked about his time at Carnegie Mellon University where he was a professor. Dr. Pausch talked about lessons he learned while working and growing up. He says that anyone can influence us such as parents, teachers, mentors, and even students; student influence is an important one since even though we can influence them they can do the same to us. Even if we are working for someone we should respect authority, but while questioning it. We should never lose our childlike wonder, help others, loyalty is a two-way street, and never give up are other lessons we should keep in our minds.

     At some point everyone needs help. Dr. Pausch created a list of a few ways to help get help which can be useful to share in a classroom to help give students a better understanding how things work with others. He says to get help we must tell the truth, believe in karma, be earnest, apologize when we screw up, and most importantly focus on other, not yourself.

     Randy Pausch finished his wonderful speech with a list of his last important advice which is:

• Be good; it makes us more valuable
• We need to work hard to get what we want
• Find the best in everybody; even if we do not see it right away it is still there 
• Be prepared 

    I loved watching this speech and gained a lot of good advice from it. He is not only a great speaker, but also great at giving useful tips to use in our own lives and especially in the teaching field since we can apply these tips and advice to the classroom.