oragami_itto wrote:I am the absolute worst martial artist on the internet, so I can't afford to not learn from everyone.
Ouch. From a pedagogic point of view that's near the bottom of the barrel in approach, increasing the probability that you'll improve little and slowly.
One of the ways I've observed for beginning students to make their journey slower, more difficult and less likely to succeed is to have that student watch and learn from his peers - other beginning students in the same class. It is essentially the blind-leading-the-blind approach.
The most effective way, usually, is to learn from people of established skill, ignoring the others who are flopping about trying to learn. The others, more often than not, are "noise".
Imagine a nursery school class of children learning to add two numbers. One says to the other, what do you think 1 + 1 is equal to. One fellow student says, "three". Another say, "zero". Yet another says, "11". One more says, "two". One other repeats the earlier answer of "three". Even though there is a right answer amongst the responses, it's buried by the incorrect answer. More than one person agreed the answer was three. Must be so. For the best chance of obtaining the "right" answer, go as close to the source as possible, in this situation, the teacher, not fellow students.
My thoughts and experience, anyway.