I basically started playing violin at the age of six. That lasted about three years because my previous teacher died and the second teacher didn't really know how to successfully get me going.

I got started when I was 3 years old because my father was a music teacher and my lessons were free. Instead of learning to walk, you learn to play the piano.

When I started out back in Louisville, there was Harry Collins. He was my first teacher. He saw that I was so obsessed with magic that he taught me the love of magic.

I started studying music at the age of five and a half. My older sister was taking piano lessons. When her teacher left our apartment, I would get up on the piano bench and start picking out the notes that were part of my sister's lessons.

I started to learn Greek when I was in high school, the last year of high school, by accident, because my teacher knew Greek and she offered to teach me on the lunch hour, so we did it in an informal way, and then I did it at university, and that was the main thing of my life.

I started writing stories when I was six years old. I was a very shy kid, extremely shy, and I had a fabulous first-grade teacher who told me to write.

I was 20 years old, working as a roofer and a telemarketer and driving a taxi, just barely getting by. A friend of a friend suggested I try acting. I was like, 'Why? What am I going to do? Community theater?' But I took a class, and the teacher thought that I had potential, so I moved to Vancouver and started auditioning.

When I first started my acting career, I only knew what my acting teacher taught me. When a director gave me an impromptu direction, I didn't know what he wanted me to do, and I wanted to escape from the place.

My first tic was to shake my head violently. I was in karate class, and I was shaking violently. All of a sudden, I just started to notice that the teacher was looking at me, and all the kids were wondering what I was doing. I suddenly felt really strange.

I was inspired by many teachers when I started my channel, Bob Ross being one of them. His voice was so soothing, almost like hypnosis. He was that great of a teacher, even the casual viewer could learn how to paint from watching his show. Growing up, I just remember him being so mesmerizing on screen.

I started running because my neighbour, Patrick Sang, was an athlete and I wanted to be just like him. Patrick came from the same village as I do and my mother used to be his teacher. I was so inspired by his success.

I loved the idea of making history interesting for kids! When Scholastic approached me about 'The 39 Clues', I immediately started going through the 'greatest hits' from my years as a social studies teacher, and picked the historical characters and eras that most appealed to my students.

I told my mom the reason I started working out was because I wanted to break the necks of the people picking on me. I wanted to hurt them. I said I didn't want any teacher to put me down any more.

I first started actually playing guitar when I was eleven years old. I had some neighborhood friends who told me they were starting a band and needed a guitarist. I told my folks, and by the next day I had a guitar lesson set up with a local teacher.

My teacher Tom Spanbauer, the man who got me started writing in his workshop, used to say: 'Writers write because they weren't invited to a party.' That always struck so true, and people always nod their heads when they hear that. Especially writers.

At art school, a teacher said: 'The best paintings are when you get lost in a piece of work and start painting in a stream of consciousness.' I wanted to do music, not art, so started writing lyrics that way. The first song I wrote was called 'Ice Cream and Wafers.' The next was 'Holding Back the Years.'

I was never a class clown or anything like that, but I do remember being in the first grade and my teacher, Mr. Chad, told the class one day that we were going to do some exercises. He meant math exercises, but I stood up and started doing jumping jacks. To this day, I don't know what possessed me to do that, but all my friends cracked up.

I started out as a high school teacher in inner-city Chicago and realized quite quickly that my students weren't that motivated.

I wanted to be in the police force, a teacher, a judge, lawyer, doctor, and other jobs. Of course, my mind changed as I started to face reality.

Obviously, after the accident, I felt let down. Questions arose: Why me? Why was I the one to suffer? People around me started giving me looks of sympathy which made me feel worse. But then, I pulled myself together and decided to win over the disability.

My faith tells me where to go and get started and what kind of sympathy to have for people once you get there.

I feel like I want to take care of everyone and I also feel this terrible guilt if I am unable to. And I have felt this way ever since all this success started.

Somehow I kept my head above water. I relied on the discipline, character, and strength that I had started to develop as that little girl in her first swimming pool.

The only concept or experience or core belief that I can attribute my other-ness to is that I just started out a weirdo and I stayed a weirdo. And it took me a long time to embrace my outsidership and see it as a strength rather than a weakness.