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
Pausch then went to the first part of his speech, explaining his childhood dreams and how he accomplished (or tried to accomplish) them. Pausch first explained his childhood, as well as his family life in the 1960s. Pausch stated that he had a "really good childhood", and, when going back through his family archive of photographs, had never found a picture of him not smiling. Some of these pictures were shown on the projection as slides, including one of him dreaming. He explained how he was inspired by the Apollo 11 lunar landing in 1969. Pausch then transitioned to a slide which contained a list of his childhood dreams, and explained them. His dreams were being in zero gravity, playing in the National Football League, being the author of a "World Book Encyclopedia" article, being Captain Kirk, being "one of the guys who won the big stuffed animals in the amusement park", and becoming a Disney Imagineer.