Blog Post #6

Finally! My internet has finally stopped acting up long enough to get this post done.

I really enjoyed watching Randy Pausch’s video Achieving your Childhood Dreams. He made the lecture so entertaining and fun; something that I hope to bring to the table when I have my own class. I want my students know that they can have fun with learning.

Something that stuck out to me that Rand Pausch had mentioned was that when people ride you, or critique you that means they still care. It is when they stop that means they have given up. I want to push my students to do their best. It may take me being hard on them, but if I know that they are capable of better, I want to show them that they are capable of better. I want my students to be able to see the potential they have in themselves. I know that I have had teachers and professors who have pushed me and shown me that if I just apply myself a little more than I wanted then I can achieve more than I thought.

A quote Mr. Pausch had stated was, “Experience is what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted”. As soon as he said this, I wrote it down. I began to go over this quote in my head. I asked myself, “What does this mean to you?” To me this quote means no matter what happens, even if I had my mind and heart set on something, and it doesn’t necessarily happen I still got to have a learning experience. I get to learn something that I never would have if I never tried to achieve that goal or dream, and I get to say that at least I got a taste of a part of that dream and probably something way more out of it, even if I did not get to do the exact thing I wanted to do. And that is something I want my students to understand. For me an example would be that I always enjoyed singing when I was younger, but I never gave it a second thought until High School. In High School I took chorus, I found out that I had a teacher who believed in me and thought that I had a good voice. He pushed me to step out of my comfort zone. I never thought that I would stand in front of an audience and sing, but it happened. After high school, I wanted to sing more. I had even thought about doing a musical, or I even had the thought of Broadway but to me that was all just a big dream. But I continued to pursue it singing, and now I am leading worship at my church, and it is the most amazing thing that I could have ever done. Though I am not on Broadway, or starring in some local musical I am still doing what I love to do and would never change it for anything.

“Brick walls are there for a reason: they let us prove how badly we want things”, is another quote that I took from Mr. Pausch. He is right when he makes this statement. I have only found that the brick walls that show up in my life only push me to get around them, over them, or even through them. I want to be able to instill in my future students that no matter what obstacles appear in your way, that if you want it bad enough you will find a way to achieve it.