Experience

A dear friend of mine frequently says, "Experience is what you get, when you don't get what you want." That's certainly true. Negotiating with difficult co-workers, driving in perilous road conditions, and restoring data from a terminally frazzled computer all gave me "experience" straight from the "this isn't what I wanted!" department.

What is also true is that when you get what you want, look out! It may be more than you bargained for. As folks who are wiser than me so frequently say, "be careful what you wish for, you just might get it." When I was a brand-new graduate student studying early childhood special education, I really wanted a public school job very close to where I was in graduate school. Even though my teaching certificate at the time was for high-school biology, I got the job I wanted, and I spent two years in one of the most challenging settings in special education. So perhaps, experience is what you get, whether you get what you want or get what you do not want.

But what is "experience," and what does one do with it?

One thing experience has been, for me, is a stock of "war stories." I can say to another person, "I was there." These stories are sometimes entertaining, sometimes poignant, and frequently help others identify with me. After swapping stories, a speaker and a listener seem to be more likely to be able to connect"and do whatever work must be done in a collaborative manner.

Another thing experience has given me is a reference for what does and does not work in certain situations. In my field, we call this a repertoire of contingency-shaped behaviors. After enduring a few fire-drills in a few different settings, it becomes easier and easier to know what to do in any fire-drill, anywhere. With experience, you begin to know "what to do when you don't know what to do."

Possibly the most important thing experience continues to give me on a daily basis is humility. The more I see and the more I do, the more I learn from others. This reminds me how much I still have to learn -- there's a wide world out there, still to be experienced.