Tales of Talent: The Secret Skills of the PSG Staff

by Marianna Sorensen

Spring 2017 Intern

 

Among the staff at PSG there are all sorts of talents. There is, of course, great skill in our many publishing services, but everyone’s skills here go beyond those. We have everyone from athletes to musicians and performers. I’m proud of my gymnastics history. I competed on the uneven bars and I loved those dismounts off the bar even if I never quite got to the Olympics. 

We have other athletes here. Alyssa was a competitive swimmer for ten years, her best stroke being the butterfly. You know she was good because she instructed swimming lessons. She even has a little experience in competitive diving, with her most advanced dive being an inverse pike. Patty hikes all over the country. Lori can dance with a hoop around her waist as well as sweep across a ballroom dance floor, and then there’s the fact that she owns and coaches at a CrossFit gym.

Then there are the performers and artists. Kate is great at impersonations and accents. She’s got the British ones down best. She can imitate the full cast of Downton Abbey, being best at Daisy, the kitchen maid, and Cora, the Countess of Grantham. Eileen both paints and writes poetry. Don has never come across a musical instrument he couldn’t play. His best is the guitar. He can also play the Native American drone flute, which he prefers to his original method of playing two tin whistles simultaneously. Then there’s Ken, who can really sing. In Handel’s Messiah, he can—from memory—sing the tenor and bass lines from almost every major chorus. Sarah has a knack for singing too, with a special talent for memorizing lyrics and melodies and replicating singers’ styles and inflections.

Many of the staff members here also have extensive knowledge in different fields. Sam has an amazing memory for faces, so she often remembers someone even if they don’t remember her. (To make them feel better, though, she has become good at pretending not to recognize them.) Colleen is a pro at sports statistics. Like the fact that Boston has unprecedented success this century—if you add up the successes of the Patriots, Red Sox, Celtics and Bruins, we have a total of 10 championships already. Pop culture is also a strong suit in the PSG office. For instance, Annette has an uncanny talent for quoting lines from the many seasons of The Simpsons, as well as for remembering old commercials and song lyrics. And Tess has an in-depth knowledge of Beatles trivia and can recite almost all the lines from the movie A Hard Day’s Night. She’s got Gilmore Girls trivia down too.

With talents this widespread, you know that the PSG staff is a truly skilled combination of people!

Did You Know?

Many people argue that success comes from the time and effort people put in and not from an innate talent. This gives us all hope for success in those activities we love but struggle with when we start out.