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Pudicitia -> RE: What do you count as experience? (1/17/2010 3:56:27 PM)
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Experience for me would be a combination of practical hands on application and participation in some form of theoretical learning. Any idiot given a needle could work out how it worked eventually, and given some degree of common sense would be able to do it with relative safety. I wouldn't however call someone an "experience" sharps player unless they had studied some theory and some practice.
In a vanilla work context I am frequently confronted with statements along the lines as "I have 20 years experience in ________" and then am presented with someone who doesn't seem to know what they are doing, or can't do it very well. As someone with only 5 years experience in my line of work I lead a team of people who are close to retirement and it is usually me coaching them on how to do their job. 20 years experience at something can mean 20 years of experimenting and experiencing new things, or 20 years of doing exactly what you did in the first year and still making all the same mistakes as you did the first time.
I am only 26, I have been out in the scene since I was about 18 and would consider myself a pretty experienced bottom after 8 pretty intensive years- not just in terms of what I have had done to me but what I have learned/observed about along the way. I also feel that I have a fair grounding in the safety/theory/practicalities in many forms of play as a top even though my RT scene based experience as a top is very limited. From my experiences as a bottom, and from the educational aspect of the lifestyle I have been lucky enough to be a part of I would probably make a technically better top that someone who has been making it up as they go along for 10 years.
For example one of my all time favourite toys is a flogger, I love flogging and have had one used on me countless times. I have never used a flogger on anyone else in a scene but I have participated in more impact play seminars/workshops/lectures than I care to remember and have used them on other people there. I can swing a flogger in a variety of different ways on a variety of different body parts and know how to safely administer a flogging, clean and maintain a flogger and probably have a pretty fair chance of making one myself.
I often think that some of the "experienced players" I see out and about would struggle to say the same with any degree of integrity.
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