Carnegie Mellon University computer science professor Randy Pausch delivered a highly memorable and inspirational presentation in 2007, entitled “Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams. ” I thought it was emotional, powerful and gripping. The tone is his voice was bright and Randy was very energetic even though he knew he only had a few months to live I really thoroughly enjoyed his Last Lecture speech. He had a lot of good talking points and brought up some new perspectives, or ways of looking at life situations, that got me thinking.
He talked a lot about his dreams when he was a child and was very humorous and inspirational throughout his speech. He also had a lot of quotes that I really enjoyed and they are what I want to focus on. “When you screw up and no one yells at you about it then they have given up on you. ” They yell at you because they care. This is something that applies to my life. I have had presumably some of the worst years of my life my junior and senior year of high school. I always believed my parents never understood where I was coming from, and if I did anything slightly wrong, they would blow the situation out of proportion.
This is not exactly the same thing, because I would not say that I have “screwed up” in my actions, but more, I have done things that my parents disagreed with. My parents would yell at me for reasons that I did not understand, and things that my friends’ parents would never yell at them for. I know that there are individual differences between families and their own beliefs, but at the time, I hated my parents. We would get into the pettiest fights, and my parents never knew how much I did not do to try and please them.
I just wanted to run away and leave and or find a way out. These were somewhat dark times for me because my relationship with my parents was just extremely terrible. Our arguments took an emotional toll on me, and it affected all of my relationships outside of my family and my schoolwork Pausch also frequently talked about his childhood dreams, such as being a Disney Imaginer, meeting Captain Kirk, playing in the National Football League, being in zero gravity and authoring an article for The World Book.
The only one he didn’t accomplish, was playing in the NFL. He actually did everything he dreamed about as a child. That is so crucial to living your life happily. I believe that anything and everything that someone is passionate about, even if it’s something from when they were six years old, should be pursued. I know a photography major at another school who has been taking pictures obsessively since she was seven. That’s what I’m talking about. Besides, who knows?
Someday, you might be Randy Pausch, and really achieve your childhood dreams. My childhood dream was to work as an anchor for ESPN. I still want to work in sports, as a college athletics video coordinator, videotaping practices and games for game tape and the university archive. Sure, it was refined somewhat, but what I want to do is basically in the same vein as my childhood dream. When being asked, “What do you want to be when you grow up,” my answer was “an ESPN anchor. I still think about that from time to time, even though I’m a freshman in college. I think if you keep the dreams from your youth in the back of your head, you will actively pursue something that you really love. If you like what you do, you will be much happier, and happiness is the key to quality of life. “The Last Lecture” was delivered by a dying man. Pausch had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, one of the most fatal diseases. The Last Lecture has given me inspiration to try my very best to succeed in my future dreams.
