What do You Learn ?

As you appear to favor verbose, I will try to be concise and fulfill the concept of  yin and yang : 

New  ( to me ) techniques in painting, putty, glues, PE, resin and now 3D printing.

Mine was my dad.  He flew for the Navy for over 30 years and I've always enjoyed building the platforms he flew (he's also a great resource for ordnance loads!).

I can remember having a 1/720 or so Nimitz that he had hand-painted the deck markings on, but the rest way bare plastic, with the one-piece plastic planes when I was a kid.  I also remember he and I working together on a 1/350 Missouri (I think it might have been the Tamiya one), and I loved getting to work on it.  When it was done only the deck (tan) and bottom of the hullk (red) had paint, the rest was bare plastic, and I think I did most of the finishing up.  That was the first Tamiya Missouri I built, it was eventually destroyed by the movers.  Dad was Navy so we moved a lot.  Fast forward several years and I built another Tamiya Missouri, with full paint this time, that was also destroyed by the movers as I am military as well.  That Missouri died along with the New Jersey, Bismarck, and Tirpitz in that move.  Missouri number 3 is in the stash, but this time I"m going to go for the 1943 camouflage.  I still love to build and work with my hands.  

Dad has always been more of a woodworker and general handyman (he literally turned an attic space into a whole new room and working full bathroom with no help) and isn't much of a modeller, but for some reason after a childhood of legos, I've always loved building models, particularly Navy ships and aircraft.  Both the ones I've served with and his, and then anything that catches my fancy (F4U, B-17, Seafire, an LHD, anything rotary wing, etc.)

Groot

I have to say, honestly, that the biggest thing I've learned here from being around since 2007 is the difficult intricacies and ramifications of online conversation and critique.

Modeling? I've learned most of what I know from magazines and experimentation and failure. But what I've learned about more than anything here is how to respond to different personality types and how to take a breath sometimes and just NOT post a reply....

THAT was the hardest lesson to learn.

For most of what I can remember, modelling has been in my life. My family on both my father's and mother's side has a history of involvement in World War 2 (nothing out of the ordinary for those times, they just did their part either as soldiers, or as part of the resistance movement). My parents were raised with that as a background. Combined with the fact that my father was always crazy about airplanes, I pretty much grew up with my father building airplane models and that hobby, as well as the interest in World War 2 rubbed off on me.

I started out, as a young boy, building small airplane models, but when I was an early teenager, my interest switched to mostly armour, with the occasional sidestep into warships. Sadly, my father passed away at the far too young age of 56, which is 7 years ago this year, but he was my "mentor" as a kid, teaching me to be patient and thinking of creative solutions to problems you could encounter when building a model. The ability to think creatively and out of the box has served me well in "real" life and I feel I have my father to thank for that. I miss the guy.