Now a day everywhere you go, you see the same old argument? Is real life experience matters? Take NBA Playoff games. The Pistons came back to level the series based on their experience. Hillary claims she has enough experience to be President on day one. Even though living in White house for 8 years doesn't really matter. Ask any veteran IT professional with more than 20 years of experience? Does the mainframe and Cobol 74 programming experience relevant in the fast changing IT industry?
My take is that experience that is relevant to the problem that you are going to solve matters. From the time we were born, everyone goes through learning process in acquiring skills. There are set of common experience all of us go through in life. But everyone goes through some unique experience in their life time which makes them different from others. These unique set of skills gained on personal experience is what matters most. A person is successful if he has the unique skills required to address the unique challenges in life. This goes back to one of the many definitions of what is intelligence. Intelligence is one where one can find the similarity between things that are very distinct and find the difference between situations that are identical. The real life experience enables a person to acquire that intelligence.
It reminds me of a great poet who wrote a short poem on Life. The conversation goes like this.
Man : What do I gain by birth?
God : Once you are born, you will know it.
Man : What do I get by death?
God : When you die, you will know it.
Man : What do I achieve by marriage?
God : When you marry, you will find it.
Man : If I have to experience everything myself, why are you there as God?
God went very close to his ears and whispered "I am nothing but your experiences in life".
So, life is all about experiences and it does matter!
