Random fleeting thought about the power of experience and perception:

I remember very well what I consider the worst workshop I've ever taken(shall not be named). It was on the expensive side, not too favorable teacher/student ratio, almost no actual instruction, moved through exercises so fast no one had time to get anything, most of the exercises themselves were overly convoluted and not that useful, seminar was trying to peddle a product rather than focus on the experience, etc.

Really, I considered the whole thing a self-centered masturbation fest. The instructor talked about themselves for the whole first hour of what seemed to be a rehearsed speech(and seemed to enjoy the sound of their own voice). After lunch, the assistant talked about himself for a good 45 minutes.

Granted, I took the seminar out of my own curiosity as an outsider to the community it was geared towards. Most of the people in attendance seemed to really enjoy the event. Were they that far indoctrinated within their community? Or maybe they attended for much different reasons than I.

Anyway, this seminar made me think a lot about peoples' motivation and reasoning and how it could differ greatly from my own.

Lastly, this seminar gave me a lot of motivation to try to better with my own teaching that I try to deliver(by my standards anyway). The lessons I learned from this day were all negative, but they have stuck with me.
I'm not saying I do better than this; but I try my best to uphold my own standards. No doubt(just by statistics if anything) that there are at least a couple people who consider my workshop the worst they've ever taken.

So I pose this question: was it really the worst seminar I ever attended? I may have learned something very different than the other attendees, but I still learned a lot.

Every experience has something to offer, It's just in how you perceive it.