I tell a student that the most important class you can take is technique. A great chef is first a great technician. 'If you are a jeweler, or a surgeon or a cook, you have to know the trade in your hand. You have to learn the process. You learn it through endless repetition until it belongs to you.
If you can't think like an onion or a carrot or a tomato, you may be a technician, but you won't understand what you're doing, and your dish will be flat.
I'm a technician. I don't go for the get-into-the-role stuff. I read the lines and play the scenes.
When I got my PhD, it was a time when there were just no jobs for PhDs. Period. PhDs were getting the lowest paid technician jobs, if they were lucky, in any kind of science.
When I travel, I always have about 40 pairs of skis with me, plus a ski technician and a ski coach.