Let’s say you are teaching a typical large introductory lecture course to say 200 freshmen. On average, they are 18 years old. That is equivalent to 3600 years of experience.
Granted, much of that 3.6 millennia are common and fairly repetitive. Granted also, it comes from the least experienced end of the life spectrum. However, statistics demands that some of those years of life are truly unique and are in a powerful position to instruct us.
For example, in my labs just this semester, I have at least two students who, as children, fled with their families various civil wars and genocidal activities, one from Nigeria and one from Rwanda. In both cases, they desire to one day return to their native villages in some capacity to improve the lives of their former neighbors, one through pharmacy and one through chemical engineering, developing native energy resources.
