Steem4nigeria Accelerator Contest Week 139: Is Experience The Best Teacher?

Imagine yourself on a football field with Christiano Ronaldo, one of the most skilled football player in the to world and you're asked to beat him in a dribbling contest, we all know you will lose, why?, because Christiano Ronaldo has trained so hard to be able to acquire the skills he has and in addition to that he's has applied those skills hundred's of times on the main pitch with actual players whom are all competing for either a title or a championship.

That is a typical example of experience, the reason you cannot beat Christiano Ronaldo is because he has more experience than you which has forced him to nurture his skills and tactics so well that he becomes the best at the football he plays.

I neither agree or disagree with this statement instead I will explain my point of view with two examples. One of the examples is going to show a scenario where experience is very much the best teacher and the second example is going to show a scenario where experience is not needed at all.

Firstly let us consider driving of a vehicle, that skill takes time to master, Driving is one of the skills where someone cannot just wakeup one day and be perfect at it because it requires hands-on practicalisation on the part of the individual who intends to be perfect at it, although the prospective driver will be tutored by a professional, he/she will not go far if he/she doesn't practicalise the methods and tactics that has being instilled on them by the professional which would make the driving lesson as obsolete as not even learning at all.

So in this case scenario we see that the prospective driver needs to carry out the methods and tactics that has been given to them by the professional in order for them to get better at the driving skill, this is a typical example of where experience is the best teacher.

Let's consider the second example where a person is given a task of charging a phone, he/she is shown the port and the charger and how to plug the charger into the phone, experience is not needed in this type of task because this task is an effort-only type of task as I would call it, this task of charging the phone requires only the basic knowledge of the phone's charging port and the charger involved and can be taught easily to a novice who has never done it before.

Another take that I have concerning the statement "experience is the best teacher" is that some individuals tend to outperform others when it comes to carrying out complex tasks for the first time as they are "fast learners" compared to their slow counterparts who will find it difficult to comprehend the processes and methods for carrying out a particular task effectively.

Although experience in some cases is the best teacher, individuals who are labeled "fast learners" tend to assimilate processes quicker and therefore do not need as much experience as individuals who are slow in comprehending processes and methods.

This question goes both ways because in order to make mistakes on a particular task you need to have had a basic understanding of how that task is supposed to be done, most of the time the problem with tasks in life is that basic understanding is not enough and if a task or problem is carried out with basic understanding, there is bound to be mistakes which sometimes might be so damaging it would be hard to recover or one might not even recover.

Let's take the example of Mark who tried to fix an electrical appliance, he has seen his uncle do it a few times, but he never fully grasped the full procedure of fixing that appliance, a day comes by and Mark's electrical appliance develops an issue, he opens it up and tries to apply the basic knowledge he has about that appliance in fixing it, to his greatest surprise he severely electrocuted by the faulty appliance because he forgot to unplug the device before fixing it and this landed him in the hospital.

This is a typical example of where guidelines from a book or a mentor matters because of Mark had grasped the full understanding of the device from his uncle, he would have avoided the mistake that led him to get electrocuted.

For me personally, I will make sure the mentor whom I look up to is an individual worthy of emulation by me, then using his advice and teachings I can be sure of myself to go ahead and carry the advice out and as a result of that get the best experience I can.

To conclude, experience is indeed one of the greatest teachers in life because it helps individuals improve their skills, confidence, and understanding. However, not every task requires much experience, and some individuals learn faster than others.

Therefore, while experience is important, proper tutoring, understanding what has been taught, and willingness to learn also play major roles in achieving success.