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.
Todd Manning and Marty Saybrooke rape storylines
Questions regarding the number of female "One Life to Live" viewers who have been raped and what kind of message "One Life to Live" was sending to their tween-girl demographic, a demographic they ranked #1 in, was noted. Lynn Parrish, a RAINN (Rape, Abuse, & Incest National Network) spokesperson for America’s largest anti-sexual assault organization, said that she had never heard of a rapist and his victim falling in love and that if people are to believe a medium watched primarily by women and written for women, it is "as common as the winter cold". Parrish stated that "One Life to Live" did not contact RAINN before telling the 2008 Todd and Marty storyline, but that ABC agreed to air a rape-themed PSA in the near future. Parish spoke of her feelings about the pairing. "There is nothing romantic about rape," she said. "Whoever writes a romance between a rapist and its victim under any circumstances clearly doesn’t understand rape nor violence — and probably shouldn’t be writing about it."