The Paradox of Experience

Today I want to talk about a peculiar phenomenon of the modern world, which I call the “paradox of experience.” Basically, as I identify it, it goes something like this: To get a job (or a role), you need experience, but to get experience, you need a job (or a role). As someone who has very little job experience, this phenomenon distresses me very much. Not only is it not good for me personally, I do not think the obsession with experience is good for anyone.
The experience paradox basically prevents prospective employers or boyfriends from taking chances. Taking chances on people breeds innovation and new ideas and breakthroughs. Taking chances forces us to consider new possibilities and challenge the status quo of both ourselves and the world. What if Ferdinand and Isabella had not taken a chance on an inexperienced, although ambitious, young sailor named Columbus? What if Albert Broccoli had not taken a chance on Sean Connery, who had little acting experience but abundant potential? Experience blinds people to potential. And in my opinion, the most important thing we should recognize in potential employees or partners is potential—potential to grow and change.
When I judge people (I admit that I judge people), I do not necessarily look at where they came from or where they end up. What really impresses me is growth—I want to see how far you’ve come and if you want to go further. Focusing on experience translates into a focus on the past—what have you been—instead of on the future—what you can become. While I do not believe in trying to overly change people, I do believe that every single individual has the capacity for positive growth and that we should all try to achieve that growth.
Last year I auditioned for Closer; I had a pitifully short list of acting experience. And at the time I auditioned, no one would have said that I could play a stripper. And yet the director took a chance on me; she saw some potential—some hint or glimmer of a capacity just below the surface waiting to come out. And I successfully transformed myself. I became something totally different that no one could have told from my experience. I thank that director so much for taking that chance on me, for giving me the break I needed to prove to the world that I could become someone and something completely different.
The experience paradox favors a less risky, more secure world view. When you take a chance on someone, you do just that: play with chance. The person might fail, or that person might also explode with ability and creativity that had just waited for someone to tap into it. You have to take a risk. When experience rules the day, however, no one takes any risk, and while they may avoid any potential failures or disasters, they also miss the possibility of something new and exciting and brilliant.
The experience paradox also presents a real practical problem: how do you break through into the job market or into relationships or into anything else that you want to do? Many job listings now say something like “degree plus two years of experience in the field.” In the field? How, on a purely practical level, do you get that experience in the field if no one will hire you without it? It’s a kind of Catch-22 situation. You get stuck between a rock and a hard place, between the job and the experience.
This is especially hard for a person like me, who has done extraordinarily well in school but little outside of school. It seems like education and school actually might be losing credibility right now, especially because these days anyone with a computer can get a degree without doing any actual work. Well, I did plenty of actual work in school and truly earned my degree. Why doesn’t that count for more? The trends of “everyone deserves a college education” and “everybody has the ability to obtain a college education” have, to put it frankly, dumbed down the college degree to make it relatively unimportant. Everyone these days has a degree. Not everyone has experience.
The recent election may signal a change. Barack Obama has relatively little experience, especially compared with other presidential candidates. Obama asked America to take a chance on him. He promised change—a departure from the same old same old. He urged us to look past what he had or hadn’t done and instead asked us to consider what he could do. Now, so far, I don’t think that the collective chance that America took has quite paid off. Now, we still have four years and the chance may prove the best thing we ever did. Or, we may have to pick up the pieces again in four years. But all the people who voted for Obama rejected an experienced but stuck-in-the-mud and stodgy John McCain for a young, inexperience, but ambitious go-getter.
I very much hope that employers and casting directors will take chances on people. You never know when you might give someone the big break they need. And I hope that one day I can give some deserving person with amazing potential his or her big break.