You have accomplished one major goal, and now another one takes its place. This is the final lecture, if we can call this a lecture, in your CU curriculum. You don't need to take notes, and there won't be any exam. Forty-nine and a half years ago, I sat where you're sitting now, but at a different university. Travel from that commencement forty-nine and a half years ago to this platform has been circuitous, varied, interesting, sometimes meandering.
Goals change, plans change and circumstances change.
Sometimes, life seemed and seems like a pinball game. You're a steel ball bouncing around from one cushion or obstacle to the next, sometimes coming to rest briefly in some pocket, only to be suddenly propelled out of that pocket back into the field of events. My own professional life proceeded in a zigzag course, without much apparent plan, and I suspect that for many of you, it's going to be the same way. Random events seem to push one first in one direction and then in another, and I'll tell you a little story about that. Many, many years ago during September, I was sitting by a lake in a park in Copenhagen pondering my future, feeding pieces of bread to the swans.