Experience is like evidence. When you're young and don't have much experience yet, you don't have much basis for confidence. All you really have is hope, and that can get shaken pretty easily. But as years go by, you start to gather this evidence. You made it through this or that and you did okay, maybe not perfectly, but okay, so when you stumble, which you will, you can look back and say, 'Well, I survived that, so I can probably survive this.' Or there will be things you're really proud of, evidence of your abilities, and you can look back on those things and say, 'I did it then, I can do it again.' Right now, you're just building up those experiences.
~ Charity Shumway
