Life experience is better than qualifications
“When I joined The Sunday Times the people I was competing with were all 10 or 15 years younger, they had double firsts from Oxford or Cambridge, and were as bright as new pins. But I’d spent that 15 years wetting myself and getting into fights and living a sort of subterranean life, but it meant I had had 15 years more experience — which was incredibly useful, and meant that I just wrote better than they did . . . It has very little to do with grammar and everything to do with knowing.” AA Gill Source: AA Gill | Register | The Times & The Sunday Times