Blog Post 7

Achieving Your Childhood Dreams

If you had one last lecture to give before you died what would it be and why. Have you ever really thought about that? At the beginning Randy made me realize to appreciate life. He has ten tumors in his liver and the doctors have given him three to six months of good health left. He used one of my favorite saying, "You can't change the cards that are dealt, we just have to play the hand." He began talking about his childhood, and how great his childhood really was. He said that in all the pictures he found of himself as a child, he was always smiling. You could tell that he has always loved and appreciated life, and even through his sickness he has never given up. He mentioned how he has many dreams as a child, which most every child does. He said he often dreamed about playing for the NFL, being Captain Kirk, being in zero gravitiy, winning stuffed animals, and being a Disney Imagineer. He then went into detail about each one of his dreams that he has always dreamed about. He mentioned that even though he had always dreamed about playing for the NFL, he said that not fulfilling that dream was good for him. He made the comment that he probably got more out of not fulfilling this dream, than he got out of some of the dreams that did come true. He told the story of how on his first day of football pratice with Coach Graham, that Coach Graham did not bring any footballs to football practice. He said that this really made him realize the fundamentals of this game, and it made him realize that fundamentals are the most important things. At the end of discussing his NFL dream, he made the comment that "Experience is what you get when you didn't get what you wanted." I find this comment very true, and you do not always get what you want in life but it makes you thankful for everything else.
Later on he started talking about his dream of meeting Captain Kirk, which I found very funny. He went on saying that Captain Kirk was not the smartest person on the ship, but he was the leader on the ship. Randy said that Captain Kirk made him realize that leadership can be so important, and that being smart isn't always what matters most. Of course he said he also liked Captain Kirk's toys haha. This dream of his came true. He said it was great, because not only did his dream come true but he wanted to know what cool things Randy was doing in his lab. He later on in life became a day-a-week consultant for imagineering for Disney. He did this for about ten years. He consultanted things like Disney Quest. So that included things like the Virtual Jungle Cruise. His childhood dreams were great, but how could he enable the childhood dreams of others?
He said that being a professor was a great place to enable childhood dreams. He had a student who had a childhood dream of working on the next Star Wars film. Tommy, the student that wanted this dream, did finally get to work on all three of those films. Randy then started explaining how he created a course called Building Virtual Worlds. In this course there were 50 students drawn from all the different departments of the university. They were randomly chosen teams, four people per team. In this course they did differnt projects. This course became a big hit. People from all over the departments were wanting to get involved with this course. He said that the students would get so excited about putting on a production and they loved the audience reations. He taught this course for over ten years, and I could tell by the tone in his voice that he absolutely loved every part of it.
They then created the Dream Fulfillment Factory. He did this program with Don Martin, and his was also a big hit. He explained how it was probably successful because Randy and Don were so different, but I guess two different minds work great together. The ETC (Entertainment Technology Center) was wonderful because of both these men. Carnegie Mellon University was a great place that was producing so many great ideas and programs to help students really fulfill their dreams.
Lessons learned was the last part of this video that was discussed. He went on to say that there has to be some aspect that lets you achieve these dreams. He began by saying that parents and mentors are a huge part of helping a dream come true. I honestly believe that too! Never give up is what he said, and I truely believe that he has never given up. This video was great. I honestly loved watching it, it made me realize to never give up on your hopes and dreams because you never know what will happen. Always be thankful for what God gave you. Always lead your life the right way!