age

[wreckwriter]

I think we should have a visible "age" field, showing in the info section to the right of the avatar.

[dfreeman1313]

In light of the other posts......a "common sense" rating would be more helpful!

JUST KIDDING!

[wreckwriter]

Originally Posted by dfreeman1313

In light of the other posts......a "common sense" rating would be more helpful!
JUST KIDDING!

That's not a bad idea but one couldn't rate oneself..... I guess "rep power" serves that purpose to some extent?

[dfreeman1313]

Originally Posted by wreckwriter

That's not a bad idea but one couldn't rate oneself..... I guess "rep power" serves that purpose to some extent?

very true! some people would rate themselves a demi-gods! LOL

[wreckwriter]

Originally Posted by dfreeman1313

very true! some people would rate themselves a demi-gods! LOL

I think most would

[Sphynx]

You two are a trip!

[JuliusSqueezer]

Age doesn't make you smarter. Glenn (Ptorgeux) came over the other day and I was standing in my back yard trying to figure out if one of my oaks was a white oak or a red oak. He not only knew every tree, shrub and weed in my yard but knew the latin for them. I didn't even know trees had latin names lol. I have a little latin stored away on certain snakes that I like..but I don't think my brain has the storage capacity for all the useless crap that kid has retained and he still had room for stuff that matters. He's in college, maybe "kid" isn't the right word.. but I'm feeling especially old today after doing the math on that other thread with those 16 year olds so today anyone under 90 is a kid.

[wreckwriter]

I know age doesn't say everything, there's plenty of kids that do know their stuff. I do believe that its a decent indicator though of whether someone is speaking from experience or just parroting someone else's words (be they right or wrong).

[dfreeman1313]

I agree totally with the premise.

Very young people are coming in here after buying a snake, read a few internet articles, keep the snake alive for a short time and think they are herpetologist. I guess I'm old enough to know I don't know very much at all.

But...that comes with age too.

[wreckwriter]

Originally Posted by dfreeman1313

But...that comes with age too.

Yup, that it does.

[wreckwriter]

This suggestion is not meant as a put down to young herpers. I totally support kids getting into the hobby, provided they do it in an intelligent manner.

Kids deal with a different set of circumstances than most adults do. Things like parents making decisions, lack of money, lack of control over environment, etc, are things that make kids' circumstances different and which, if we knew, might direct our answers to questions differently.

[JuliusSqueezer]

With me it went kinda like this. I started catching and really studying reptiles when I was 7 or 8 ...not counting the frogs, toads and lizards I was dragging in the house since I was about 3. But at 8, I didn't think I knew it all but I was determined to learn every bit of it. I watched a lot of nature shows and read every book about snakes I could find. By the time I was 14 or 15. I knew everything there was to know about any snake on the planet and everyone else was basically clueless. I was comfortable enough back then to wrangle some of the venomous found around here without so much as getting an adrenaline rush and started doing some rescue/rehab work. Yeah! I was there...knew it all! Then I got to college. That's when I started learning the most important lesson of all in herpetology. I started seeing that most of what I KNEW was actually very wrong. And everything I actually learned led to other unopened doors so basically, the more I learned, the more I also learned I didn't know. Then when I hit my late 20s, internet came out and opened up a lot more doors and made me feel all stupid yet again. Man...I wish we had internet back in the early 70s. Kids today getting into this hobby fresh get a jump start. They don't have to spend years and years of trial and error, learning by screwing up in every conceivable way there is to screw up till they find something that sorta works. It's all right under their fingertips. The only thing they really have to sort out is who to believe. Unfortunatly, they tend to relate more to kids their own age and like everything else...blow off the older people as stupid...which in a way is fair because we tend to blow them off the same way sometimes. But it shouldn't be that way. You younger guys can study and read and learn circles around some of us old guys but all the knowledge in the world doesn't replace wisdom. Wisdom doesn't come from books or google searches. It comes from experience. Reading about some things gives you basic ideas at best. Till you get your hands on an adult amazon tree boa or till you have a 7 foot eastern diamondback tailed on a hook for the millionth time...these things you can't get from a book or a webpage. Nothing in text can prepare you for the events that unfold when you actually take some of those plunges. So when some of us oldtimers seem a bit harsh, cranky, frustrated or the big one..." feeling fairly sure you are getting in way over your head and don't mind telling you" It's because we've been there and done that and seen the same crap unfold so many times that there really needs to be credit given out to some of us old farts for just being harsh and cranky and not going out and climbing towers with sniper rifles.

So to sum it all up...this what I know now. It's probably going to turn out wrong when I'm 60 but I'll deal with that then...Right now, I'm still right so don't argue...anyway...

Knowlege + experience = wisdom. NEITHER is worth smack without the other but that's ok. Get the knowledge first...as much as you can...the experience is the tough one because the knowlege you have will convince you that 2-3 years working with that ball python counts for anything. Be patient on the experience thing. It takes a long time till the hands on stuff starts becoming routine and even more importantly is learning from experience which things you absolutely do NOT want to let become routine. I don't think I'm close to being there yet. 33-34 years and I still feel that I have a long way to go so pardon me if I get a little cranky when someone locked into the teenage knowitall stage gets a little under my skin.