By Cassie Stolz

As winter comes to an end and spring eagerly awaits bearing new opportunities with it. No matter what your learning style is, the best way to learn is through experience. According to experts in learning styles, the best way for someone to learn is through experiences. Preparation though unique opportunities teaches us knowledge we weren’t seeking to learn in inimitable ways. For each of us, opportunities enter our lives with exciting new potential.

Kolb’s Experiential Learning Theory presents a cycle of four elements

1. Concrete Experience
2. Reflective Observation
3. Abstract Conceptualization
4. Active Experimentation

The cycle begins with an experience that the student has had, followed by an opportunity to reflect on that experience. Then students may conceptualize and draw conclusions about what they experienced and observed, leading to future actions in which the students experiment with different behaviors. This begins the cycle anew as students have new experiences based on their experimentation (Oxendine, Robinson and Willson, 2004).

Evaluating your options that will contribute to building character, a resume, and life experiences, it’s encouraging to take a chance. Taking a calculated risk by step through a new door not exactly knowing what’s in the room, has exciting rewards.

Especially if it is a high potential opportunity, you owe it to yourself to see it through because you may never get that opportunity again. Shoot your shot because we should never regret an experience if you learned anything about ourselves, a passion, or a career from it.

However, authentic opportunities are sometimes the ones that we don’t immediately see. They come by at the most unexpected, mostly inopportune, times. We are so preoccupied with other distractions or our own opinions that we normally miss the majority of opportunity that falls across our path.

But something that is fundamental to that progression is acting when the opportunity is present! “Take every chance you get in life, because some things only happen once.”

We need to become yes-people (almost). Say yes when you perceive these new prospects to expand our comfort zone. Say yes to new life. Say yes to experience. Don’t say yes to everything, though, saying yes to every opportunity will burn you out completely. Trust your gut, it will take you down the path that is right for you.