final exam

02121155 Illena Knowledge gained from book and from experience We all know that the source of knowledge is not single, it can be from your life experience or from textbooks or other books you learn in school and on your own. One thing for sure is that they are all important to complete our life. But there are two major differences between them. The first difference is the width of the knowledge and the second one is related to selectivity. Our life experience cannot always be so abundant according to the realities, after college we need to find job as soon as possible, and then we need use any means to form and maintain a family; therefore all the experiences and we gained in our actual life may be the most basic and essential knowledge. However, when we read books not only just textbooks in school but also other books like novel, poetry or journals, we can learn a bunch of information. As a reader, we can learn from the writers’ experiences, even though we never truly experiences what them talked about; however, through their words, we are like the writers themselves at that moment. The most obvious example is that, we may not be able to travel around the world, but we can through watching others’ traveling books to learn other countries’ culture. The second difference is that from our own life experience, we cannot actually select what we want to learn or not; instead, most of the time, we learn lessons afterwards, both good and bad knowledge. On the contrary, when we read books we can select what we want to learn; therefore, broaden our own knowledge in whole aspects, not merely restricted in one area. For example, if I want learn about computer-based knowledge, I can go to choose those related books to read. From my twenty years’ experience as a student, it seems for me, the knowledge learn from the books is more useful than knowledge gained from my experience, because they are more broad and profound, helping me to gain the knowledge that I may otherwise have no chance to learn in my whole life. But what I am saying now is based on a point that knowledge gained from books and from life is equally crucial to enable us to live a life more smoothly. So for different people, the priority may change.