Good day to you all my tutors and learners here on hive.

I remain this humble soul who is always ready to appreciate my existence on the surface, once we realize that staying alive is never by our power or might then we know that all we have to do in life is to thank God for his mercy and grace over us.

I can testify to the saying that “EXPERIENCE IS THE BEST TEACHER”. Indeed experience is the best teacher and this is because it brings along a lot of practical rather than theoretical aspects of it.*

Experience is more of working on the job and becoming an expert at what you do. You can't read a textbook and become an expert. You might fumble things up when you get your hands on the real work if you were only learning through books alone.

This is more of a reason why we were taught practicals after the theoretical explanations in class. The practicals most times are not handled by our teachers who can explain it all via books, but they are handled by experts and laboratory attendants who have spent years dedicating their time to those practices.

You can learn how the keyboard works from textbooks, and have imaginary views about it but still get on the system and not be able to type. Compared to a computer operator who had learned the use of computers on the go without getting to read a book about it. He will operate the computer more efficiently than the one who studied with books.

This would take me straight to the prompt for week 55 edition 2 on the hive learners community and the topic to be discussed is EXPERIENCE OR TEXTBOOK.

MY EXPERIENCE IN THE SCIENCE LABORATORY

Yeah, even though experience is the best teacher, and it gives us a perfect learning environment, there are some sad stories behind them. If you get to ask those who are experienced you will surely get to see a scar or sign that they must've gotten from their experiences.

I remember when I was having my final year project work in the laboratory. Our lab attendant was an elderly man who was always in the laboratory to assist students and most of the time work for the faculty. My first encounter with him made me realize how much he had worked in the laboratory.

When I looked at his hands, his right fingers were already dark-colored compared to his other hand. I tried to ask him the cause of his finger being burnt, and he said; “this is due to the long exposure of my hands to hazardous chemicals in the laboratory.”

My positive experience

I remembered when we were preparing for the entrance examination, we were taught a lot of lab instruments in class, the pipette, burette, conical flask, litmus paper, and many acidic and base substances. We were just having them in our heads and also picturing them from textbooks. We knew what those instruments looked like but no one had used them before.

The very first time we got to the laboratory, our teacher had to show them to us and we were to use them for practical purposes. You could feel the happiness flowing through us. One funniest part was that while we got to the practical aspect was when I got to understand some of the theories we were taught in class.

So the next time we were taught, I am always relating it to the real-time experience we got in the lab.

The bad side.

When I got to the university, it was way easier to get my hands on the laboratory equipment. I was selected as the leader of my group when we had our practicals.

Experience like I said most times leaves a scar on the person. While we were having our practicals, there was a group leader from another group. After he underwent the process, all he had left to do was to burn the chemical on a bunsen burner. He placed it on the burner, and the next thing that happened was the chemical gushing out of the burette and getting straight to his face. He screamed for help.

I was shocked at where I was and the chemical I was about to mix poured on my hands. It didn’t hurt me or showed any signs but it already began to eat my flesh gradually. We ran to rescue the victim as he was rushed to the school clinic for proper treatment.

When I got home after the whole practical stuff, I was about to wash my hands to eat, then I realized my palms were damaged by the chemicals. It has already changed color. I was scared it would become a scar and won't leave anymore, but with time it faded off. It became one of my bitter experiences yet having experienced these things before.

The man who views the world at 50 the same as he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life

— Muhammad Ali

_{HEADER IMAGE: By Puneetyadav on Pixabay and edited canva app}