I found this video to be very inspiring. I had seen excerpts from it at my sister's departmental graduation from UNC Chapel Hill, but in class last week was the first time that I had seen the entire thing. Randy Pauch's view on how to live life is amazing. The concept that we can and should achieve our childhood dreams is fairly foreign in modern society.
Most of the time I ask someone why they are in, or are studying to be in, a particular field of work, I get responses dealing with money or that they have to do something to get by. I find this concept of being forced to do what you can to get by as appalling, especially when I hear it from people in college. I chose computer science as my major because I am passionate about the subject and have wanted to do research in the field of AI since I was a little kid. Granted, since I am in the field of computer science, I am not really sacrificing anything monetarily for pursuing my interests, but the fact that there is money in Computer Science did not and does not really affect my decision in the matter.
I realize that my life has been considerably easier than many others, who may be struggling to get by with their low wage jobs. However, I believe that given enough effort, anyone can succeed and get to achieve their dreams. I realize it will be significantly harder for some than others to achieve their dreams (and this is a major flaw in the idea of America being a "land of opportunities"), but I believe that everyone has at least one thing that they can be so passionate about that they will put in whatever work it takes to achieve that dream. I also believe that is is possible for everyone if they put in the work. Unfortunately, our current society focuses more on encouraging children to get by rather than to succeed at achieving their dreams. This culture of laziness is holding our country back from achieving true greatness by limiting what our children's expectations are in life.
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