ABSTRACT
On this 50th anniversary of the COPSS, I feel incredibly fortunate to have stumbled into the career path that I followed, which appears, even in hindsight, like an overgrown trail in the woods that somehow led to a spectacular location. In some sense, there is an odd coincidence in that it is also roughly the 50th anniversary of my recognizing the field of statistics as a valuable one. When thinking about what I could say here that might interest or help others, and is not available in other places, I eventually decided to write about my path and the importance, to me at least, of having wonderful “mentors” with different backgrounds, which allowed me to appreciate many different modes of productive thinking. Probably the characteristic of the field of statistics that makes it so appealing to me is the wonderful breadth of intellectual topics that it touches. Many of my statistical mentors had a deep appreciation for this, and for that I will always be grateful, but also I have always felt very fortunate to have had admirable mentors from other disciplines as well.
