I'd like to disregard the "who" for a second, and first answer the "what". WHAT is my worst teacher? I'd say--"Exclusively Theoretical Scenarios."

See, the reasons learning from exclusively theoretical scenarios is terrible are numerous and we could go on about them all day. To understand why, though, we might start by referencing the popular axiom, "Experience is the best teacher."

Recently I've found myself in arguments with a few of my friends who, perhaps wanting to go down as immortal iconcolasts, decided to challenge that maxim and say, "No dude. No, Hell no dude no way! Experience is not the best teacher."

And their argument mostly stems from the stance that you don't HAVE to go through some unfortunate circumstance to learn from it. You can, in fact, and should prefer to, learn from other's mistake.

That is fine, of course, and you might even be swayed by their rhetoric. But you have to remember that "they're" missing the point emphatically. lol. I say emphatically because the emphasis is not even on the word "teacher", it is on the word "best". Experience is NOT the ONLY teacher, or the SAFEST, or the FASTEST, or the MOST ADVISABLE, no, experience IS the BEST teacher.

While you may learn a lot from examining historical situations from which you're completely removed, while you may learn a lot from conjectures, and from the lives of people who "made it" or fail to make it, you can never really learn anything as EMPHATICALLY as you would learn it were that situation or event pertinent to YOU.

A child who sees another child insert his hand in a burning candle will see the other child's pain and wince. He might even say he'd never try that ever in his own life. But we ARE curious beings. It will not be at all surprising if the next day that child chooses to also insert his own hand in the flame just to see how much it stings or if the boy had exaggerated. But NOW having had the experience HIMSELF, he can make the decision to keep doing it or never to try it again.

Which brings me back to why "Exclusively Theoretical Scenarios" are the worst teachers. You read it in a textbook, you read it in a novel, you extrapolated, you came up with the amazing conjecture in your head--all fine and good! But I tell you, until you have experienced that thing in real life, until have practicalized it, so to speak, and determine what its real life applicability--or lack thereof--is; until you have done these you CAN NOT claim to know anything about anything in real life.

Is it any wonder that most university graduates find it hard to make it in the real world? No, of course not. I would know. I am one. Four years in the University studying industrial Chemistry. I can write off hand the equations for the extraction of various metals and transition metals. But do I really know a thing about how it works in REAL LIFE? No.

So again, what is my worst teacher? Learning exclusively from theoretical scenarios. And who are my worst teachers? My college professors! Cheers XD.