Fifteen years ago, TEDxCU took its first leap. We've been catching air ever since. 

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Athletes talk about the moment when the work stops feeling like work. Gravity lets go. The body lifts. For one second, you're completely airborne. Then you land. And nothing is quite the same. Skaters call it catching air. But the feeling isn't exclusive to sport. It belongs to every field and every person who has pushed long enough to feel unstoppable. 

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“Catching Air” is the theme for people who know what the grind feels like and what it feels like when it pays off. Catching air isn't luck, it's what lift feels like when preparation and momentum finally meet. The researcher who runs the experiment and learns from each iteration. The musician who plays the passage until it's muscle memory. The engineer who rebuilds from scratch. The dancer who lands it after ten thousand attempts. The founder who watches an idea leave the ground. The teacher whose student finally gets it. 

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Every discipline has its grind and its moment of liftoff. 

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For TEDxCU's 15th anniversary, “Catching Air” celebrates that moment. The repetition. The doubt. The refinement. The return. The win. Whether you work in code or clay, biology or business, performance or policy, this stage is yours. Because the first time you catch air, something changes. You stop asking if it's possible and start asking how much higher. 

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What did you have to build before your idea could fly? And now that you're airborne, where could this idea take us next? 

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Applications will open in August.