Sunday, September 7, 2014

Experience: A Biased View Of Life

"Have you done this before? We need you to start working right away, you need prior experience..."

Experience is what lets us do stuff effortlessly. Unfortunately, we might not always be experienced at something.

Fortunately, it can be gained by engaging with stuff that you haven't done yet. New things always give us a new perspective, and that's what experience is all about. The slight problem, though, is you might not always have an opportunity to try out something new. This implies that you do stuff every day over and over again in predefined routine. This is good in a way. If you are, for example, working a job, then even though you might not be doing something new, it will add up to you job experience of having a particular skill.

If you want to try out something new, then you have to find a way to break free from your current routine.

Consider the case of the playing the video games Assassin's Creed 2 (AC2) and Assassin's Creed Brotherhood. As you play the role of Assassin Ezio, you try so hard to become the best assassin that you can be in AC2. But once you complete that game and move on to Brotherhood, all that goes away, Ezio loses his fancy armor and weapons, and you have start over from scratch. But you have experience from playing the first game. And that itself is extremely useful in starting over.

Its kind of like college life. Working so hard to prove yourself to everyone how hard working and dedicated you can be is a daunting task. But once you start employment, or join for higher education in a different university, it starts all over again. But you have experience to help you out.

So the next time someone asks you about experience, don't be afraid. Tell them that experience only comes through practice, and that only comes through first having an opportunity. Ask them for that opportunity if they are in a position to give it.

Cheers!

2 comments: