Randy Pausch's Last Lecture
In this video of Randy Pausch's Last Lecture, Dr. Pausch first let's us know that he has cancer and has less than six months left to live, but he takes this opportunity to give a valuable lesson on life and how to live. I enjoyed it, and his insight on the lessons that are taught by just being involved in certain exercises, he referred to these as "head-fake" lessons. An example he uses is learning sportsmanship and teamwork from the simple act of playing football as a child. Sometimes these lessons are the most valuable knowledge that anyone can gain in life.
Dr. Pausch spent the first part of his lecture discussing his childhood, and the dreams that he had always hoped to realize. He delivered the discussion with enough humor and charisma that the listeners were entertained and were kept interested and involved. Dr. Pausch talked of "brickwalls" or barriers, obstacles that are put in our way to keep "others" from reaching your dreams. He learned his "head fake", strong work ethic from his football coach, who also taught him that people that don't correct you when you make a mistake have given up on you.
The next portion of Dr. Pausch's speech, hemoves on to telling that the greater gift in his life was not realizing his own dream, but rather helping others realize their own dreams. His students were the ones that he helped realize their dreams. His background in Virtual Reality and his the contacts that he made in the private sector helped many of his students get a leg up on the competition for those positions. But, I find the most important thing he mentioned in reference to his students was not only to set the bar to low, don't set the bar at all. He found that his students went well beyond all of his expectations.
I feel that Dr. Randy Pausch was a great contributor to his students life and his loss is a loss for all those that had the privelage to have him as a teacher. He spent the last segment of his speech trying to show the "head-fakes" in this lecture. The one that hit home for me was the fact that the lecture was not for us, it was for his two young children.
I agree with you that it was very creative of him to tell his students to set the bar low or not at all. It leaves the door open for students to reach for more academic success from within themselves. This type of learning is mostly to be more beneficial to students since they are pushing themselves to reach their own level of education.
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