Yeah... you really cant do any of that stuff until you move past working wiht inert atmospheres. I can tell you this much...
After 3 years of majoring in chemistry at The University of Connecticut i didnt learn shit about actual lab work. Sure we did basic stuff but we didnt even learn to vacuum distill anything which is huge if you can not work in a vacuum you can not distill a lot of organic substances. Everything i learned was "theory" so like i can do draw out pi bonding orbitals and prove how orbitals interact as their valence electrons approach one another but that isnt a real world skill. Then there is the whole knowing how to actually work in a lab Uconn taught me to be comfortable in the lab but it wasnt until i took my actual college courses into my house that started learning real chemistry.
When you really learn chemistry you learn to respect a lot of stuff. As the above person mentioned it does not take much to end up like this:
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/...ids-prison-fatal-lab-fire-20140620-story.html
Pretty sure she was incinerated in front of people too. I really dislike how the internet makes knowledge and skill seem easily had, do you go climb mount Everest because someone posted how to do so in a forum using beer bottles and glue? Instant access to information doesnt make you an expert, it gives you an opportunity to learn but the road is long for a reason and chemistry has the type of rep it has for a reason, its not easy or forgiving.
Now ask yourself if I, who have been into chemistry since i first encountered it on TOTSE, a website in the 90s basically for the anarchists cookbook and stuff, then majored at a university took classes called "advanced inorganic 1 and 2" yet even i am afraid of working with LAH because a lot of things are unforgiving and are literally looking for a way to kill you, do you think your ready? It starts by being able to tell the difference between a florence flask and an erlenmeyer flask