Randy Pausch's Last Lecture

First off, I’d like to say how incredible of a person Randy Pausch was and truly an inspiring/ amazing individual throughout his whole lecture. To tell you the truth, I really enjoyed his lecture from the beginning to the end. It had a good balance of humor, sadness, creativity, and in all honesty I didn’t feel it as an hour long video at all. Something that really stuck with me was when he was explaining about how he achieved his childhood dreams. In my personal opinion, I think that it’s a great feeling to fulfill a lifetime goal that many of us at one point may have thought that it was a silly idea, but that silly goal became your pursuit of happiness.

On another note, I thought it was awesome how Randy quoted one of my favorite movies growing up, which was from “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory”. When I was a child, I never really paid attention to the little wise quotes from the movie, but then again I was just a kid and all I cared about was candy back then. The piece that Randy quoted “he lived happily ever after”, made me smile because I felt that he used the quote in a way where people can relate to the story in real life but through a fairytale analogy (if that makes any sense). This guy is so amazing, he had a heart of a child and saw the good in everything, like a Disney character! He had cancer but he didn’t let that slow him down from having any fun till the very end.

Randy gave really great advice; I felt that everything he had to say was very informative, whether he was talking about one of his colleagues or even the different events he has experienced throughout his life, a lot of things he said were really wise and can actually be passed down to many game designers as well. I felt very inspired by Randy; there were many times where I just wanted to give up on school because I was too tired or because I felt that learning about my future career has taken up a lot of time from me and my son. After hearing Randy say “Never lose the childlike wonder. Show gratitude... Don't complain; just work harder... Never give up”, this brought me back as to why I’m majoring in “Game Production”, because it’s something I’ve always had a passion for since I was kid and this is what I really want to do, no matter how long it takes. When I was kid, I would play video games with my brother, he would always tell me that I can do anything I set my mind to, while everyone else used to tease me for being a girl who loved playing video and reading “Spawn” comic books with my older brother.

Today, I’m still that geeky girl that loves comic books and enjoys playing a whole lot of video games. I’m not really a religious person but like Randy, I do want to follow my passions, I do believe in karma and I know good things will come around one day. The last lecture was really something, it was very motivational in my perspective. As a future game designer, we all have to learn to take any kind of feedback because it is what makes us become better designers. I know I’ve said this many times, but I would prefer everyone to tell me the brutal truth about any kind of feedback they have for my projects. In the end, any kind of feedback I receive can really benefit me on making improvements on any project I may be working on.

As a mom, I do get emotional watching “Mulan” and I do tend to get a tear here and there or just be in a total mess (either or). So seeing this video really made me shed a “HAPPY” tear, so I would like to say thank you Karen for letting me have “the feels” on my wonderful evening (haha), and thumbs up, it was a great lecture overall.