You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself in any direction you choose. You’re on your own, and you know what you know. And you are the guy who’ll decide where to go. –Dr. Seuss

The new year is a time to feel empowered to make big changes in your life. Some people make resolutions to be healthier, to save more, and to just be a better person. This year, take a different approach: resolve to achieve your childhood dreams.

I was a junior in the Honors program at the University of Georgia when I signed up for an honors book club focused on Carnegie Mellon professor Randy Pausch’s Last Lecture “Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams.” Pausch was dying from pancreatic cancer at the time and sought to impart whatever wisdom he had gained during his time on Earth. His lecture profoundly altered my view of the direction in which I was heading and how it meshed with my own childhood dreams.

To start, here are a few dreams from my early years:

• Become a chemist like Marie Curie (yes, Marie Curie was a childhood hero of mine)
• Train dolphins and killer whales just like Jesse in Free Willy
• Write a novel (just one)
• Write a one-hit wonder (again, just one will suffice)
• Play in a band (never made it past naming the band with a couple high school friends)
• Commentate for NPR (I filled GirlTalk tapes with fictional NPR segments led by yours truly)
• Prevent deforestation by turning all land into nature reserves
• Ride my bike everywhere; freedom from traffic and pollution
• Perform on SNL
• Become a professor
• Do something that will make a HUGE difference

Pausch’s idea is that it is imperative to keep your childhood dreams alive, actively pursue them, and have the flexibility to adjust them in a way that you still reach them though perhaps in a slightly different capacity. For him, he wanted to be an Imagineer with Disney and was able to achieve that big dream through an internship (the specifics are hazy in my mind, but I encourage you to look into the specifics).

For me, I found a creative outlet in learning the guitar and playing flute in my church band; it’s not Blink 182, but making music energizes me and this is a way for me to achieve my dream today.I may have a ridiculously long commute, but I am proud to say that it is comprised of biking five miles and taking a commuter train each way so that I bypass the majority of the craziness that is DC commuting. The professor and “making a difference” dreams combined in my Teach for America corps experience during which I had the opportunity to make a direct impact on a daily basis in the classroom. As for the one hit one wonder and novel, all in due time!

I still have quite a ways to go towards achieving the dreams above, but the simple act of planning for and pursuing them in whatever possible way is incredibly gratifying, rewarding, and fun. I challenge you to write down a few of your childhood dreams and reflect on how close or far off you are from making them a reality. Thinking ahead to the transfer application process, colleges and universities are looking for individuals who are following their passions and engaging in ways that bring out the best in themselves and others; grades are important, but well-rounded students are the most impactful.

With that said, dust off your bass. Train for that marathon. Try out for a play. Don’t let the fear of failure keep you from going for it. I promise you, the effort of simply branching out and challenging yourself will be worth as much, if not more than, the results. You deserve to have amazing experiences. You can still achieve your childhood dreams if you find the resolve.

What's a childhood dream you'd like to achieve this year? Let us know in the comments.