It’s my first CliftonStrength.

You know about this online test, do you not? Which nails everyone I have known who has taken it. Seriously. If you don’t know about it, then now’s the time to look into it.

I first came into contact with it when I took Entrepreneur training in 2017. There were 15 people in the room, and those who took it and thought it didn’t apply to them had the whole room tell them otherwise.

“Yep. That’s you.”

My life as a researcher has been taken up with how the Garcias and the Lampertis taught their students. You’ve got to go pretty deep as a researcher to figure this out.

Context is about how one piece of the puzzle fits with all the others next to it. It means going to the library and reading your ass off, interviewing the few who can talk about what they do, and getting up in the middle of the night when the dots connect and writing it down.

It means thinking about the teaching of singing night and day—you are the one and cue, Cole Porter.

That’s how my brain works. Lateral motion. Very handy when finding connections within context.

If we don’t know each other and you call me up or email me, I immediately think of what led you to do it, what your needs are, and what you might be running from and towards. But you know what? I can’t control any of it—not the past anyway. I can only be who I am and offer what I have to offer.

I don’t make promises, nor do I offer easy solutions. I take the tack that I can give you the tools to work things out, but it’s up to you to do it. That said, if on the outside, I seem like vinegar, you will find that I’m pretty much all honey during lessons. It’s my fifth strength: Activator, which simply means I cheerlead, I push, I get the dial moving.

Give me an inch and I will go for a mile.

This is the only way, as I see it, to progress. You can only know you can do it by doing it.

It’s all about context.