Blog Post #7

Randy Pausch was an inspirational speaker. He spent his life inspiring others After being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, Pausch lived his life every day like it was his last. In this video of his last lecture, he talks about his dreams, him helping others achieve their dreams, and lessons he has learned along the way. This lecture was not to be sad he simply did not want anyone to feel sad for him or his family.
"Brick walls are there for a reason: they let us prove how badly we want things." When Pausch said this I honestly felt like he was talking to me. I believe that if you truly want something you would not let anything stand in your way to get what you want. This was a very inspirational quote because everyone should live by it. Teachers should live by it inside their classrooms so their students this will believe that they can be anything they want to be if they put their minds to it. He spoke frequently about his students and the adventures of discovery they made together in the field of the virtual world. He mentioned that when he gave his first assignment, and the students turned in videos that amazed and awed him, a fellow employee told him not to let his students know that they did a great job because they may not work as hard. Instead he repeatedly told his students to do better.
"Alice", the project Randy was working on at ETC was "millions of kids having fun while learning something hard". Another one of Randy's quotes was "When you're screwing up and no one is saying anything anymore, that means they've given up on you." This quote ties into the previous quote I mentioned above. If teachers let their students know that it is okay to accept constructive criticism; without it you would never know your flaws. He encouraged other teachers to allow there students learning occur during something fun. Like everything else, when the going gets tough "experience is what you get when you don't get what you want".
At the end of his lecture, Randy made a great point, "Don't bail the best gold is at the bottom of barrels of crap." Everyone goes through hard times in order to get to where they wanna be in life. He also said "don't complain; just work harder." Even after so much criticism Randy got to where he was by working hard. As Rafe Esquith mentioned in his book "kids these days don't want to work for it they just want their life handed to them on a silver platter." I was very excited to have watched this video. I plan to bring these lessons into my classroom and hopefully my students will learn from them so they can pass them on.