Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams
"Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams" was delivered on September 18, 2007, at Carnegie Mellon University's McConomy Auditorium. Over 450 Carnegie Mellon students, staff members, and friends of Pausch attended the lecture, leaving only standing room as this was more than the auditorium could hold. Pausch later commented about this in an interview, saying "A couple of hundred people in a room, looking and listening and laughing and applauding – hopefully at the appropriate times – that gives a lot of validation to my kids that a lot of people believe in this, and a lot of people who knew me believe that I did my best to try to live this way." The first introduction of the speech as well as the series of lectures was given by Indira Nair, the Vice Provost for Education at Carnegie Mellon. Nair first explained the university's aforementioned lecture series called "Journeys", in which eight more professors from Carnegie Mellon would share their insights on their professional and personal experiences over the years.
Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams
Next, Pausch explained his dream of being like Captain Kirk from the "Star Trek" series, with the slide showing ""Being like Meeting Captain Kirk"". Pausch explained that he realized that there were some things he just could not do, and that was one of them. He eventually changed the goal into meeting William Shatner, the actor who played Captain Kirk. Shatner had written a book on the science of "Star Trek", and had gone to Pausch for help with the virtual reality section of the book. Pausch met and worked with Shatner for this purpose. Pausch concluded the section with the story of his becoming an Imagineer at Disney, as well as his achieving the goal of "being one of those guys who wins stuffed animals", which was at a carnival with his wife and children.