Teaching is Important

[Scheveningen]

This is a short topic this time. Thanks to sseth, we've had an explosion of greytide flooding the various servers in the past week. 

Yes, some people are probably ill-prepared and really do not want to teach new players that much. It is an understandable sentiment, and not everyone is very selfless, because teaching players to do things can be quite draining.

Coders can probably relate to this subject the most, but most people have been in the position where they're stuck on a particular step and don't know why a result isn't reproducing the way they want it to. Many programmers have had a "eureka!" moment through experiencing having to explain a problem to a person, often someone with no experience on it, and whilst explaining layman terms to them, they immediately run across the solution to the problem. This is actually a funny story in itself, worth a read even if you have no interest in coding: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging

Essentially, however, teaching isn't just a thing that only benefits the person being taught. If you can and you find a new player who seems lost, gently pull them aside for a fun lesson or several, especially if you struggle with the field you try to explain. You may come across the answer through trial and error by explaining in the most basic way what the general steps to performing a task are. Likewise, perspective is really amazing. If you feel like you know a lot about the game and have plenty of experience, sign up as a teacher for a round, seek out people in your department to show off your knowledge too. Keep it simple so that you don't have to explain any complexities.

Likewise, while it's great to have pride as a teacher, be careful that it doesn't form into an academic's ego. That can cause problems if you don't keep it in check.

[AmoryBlaine]

Always ask them if they have questions, don't ever just throw text walls at them. I almost always teach cadets the basics as well as CQC shit. Make sure they understand the basics, before anything else. If you can, use visual aids like screenshots and the like as well. And take into consideration they might not know what hotkey mode is.

[Butterrobber202]

Literally taught an intern all of Chemistry in one go the other night, felt good.

[Skull132]

Going to shoot you for this. Rubber ducky isn't a good example of why teaching is beneficial to you. Rubber ducky is highly situational (you must actually be stuck on the issue you are attempting to solve), and it benefits greatly from the participant actually being aware of the work (say, being another programmer). This is because, if the act of explanation itself doesn't help, you still have a competent colleague to hold a dialogue with over the issue and hopefully solve the issue.

The actual reasons of why teaching is beneficial to your knowledge of a subject are far more grand. A good few examples are the various different perspectives teaching will provide for an issue, due to the fact that not everyone views the world in the same way, and due to your continued exercise in distilling the issues you're attempting to teach down to their very essence. Both of which will help your understanding of the given subject immensly, and will allow you to analyze it further in more advanced work.