My worst experience was OOC drama over me being an idiot and making some really bad comments that I shouldn't have. Not going to provide details though.
Therefore, I'll describe a second, more fun incident instead.
So, it was my second week in PIE or so. I was still doing just mining at the time. That night, Thgil ran a PIE fleet, with Aldrith and some other people. I had absolutely no combat skills but really wanted to participate because I was very tired of mining and wanted to hang out with people. So I ignored the fact that Samira was a coward, fit up a salvager coercer, and went out. I figured I'd be safe. Afterall, up to this point I had thought I was pretty hot shit at EVE since I had gotten quite a few comments about how I was uncannily good at understanding the game despite being new. I was packing a cloak, so what could touch me?
I join up with them. They're all in frigates, I'm in a dessie. So, of course, they go into a novice and I can't follow. They wanted to have a small (or might have been a medium) scouted, though, and so I volunteered because I wasn't able to do anything else. They suggested I wait at the station since I was a newbie, but in my arrogance I didn't listen. So I flew over to the plex, scouted it and saw no one there on directional scanner (my first time using it, too), and went in to start taking it.
Then I saw someone on scanner. Had no idea if he was friend or foe, didn't know the scanner didn't tell you, so I was slow to cloak up. People were telling me to jump out over TS. Dude jumped onto the grid, was an enemy WT. I cloaked up, but he either saw me or was just conveniently moving in my direction, because I saw he was closing distance. I probably would have been safe, but I was panicking due to my lack of experience and worried he'd bounce me out of cloak, and people were still telling me to jump out. So I picked the first celestial I could see and jumped there. Jumped at 0, that is, because I had just mashed the button. Of course, not paying attention, the first celestial I found happened to be the ihub, and the system was currently vulnerable (I think).
So, I jumped into the middle of a WT fleet. Froze up, didn't know what to do. Where was I, what had I just jumped into, it won't let me cloak cause I'd jumped on top of people, what do I do! Got tackled, blown up, and had my pod tackled and blown up.
Cloned, and just sat there, stunned. Samira as a character is a coward and hates cloning because she doesn't see the clone as being a continuation of the same person, and I'd gotten podded, on my first night in FW when I had just gone out to hang with people and have fun. Had no idea where I'd take the character and how I'd have her react from that, I hadn't expected to be podded so soon, I had expected to last on the original for several months at least because I was actively working to avoid getting podded. I had to step away from the computer and take a break for an hour or two to settle down.
It was nothing that major (aside from being a
pretty embarrassing loss mail), it was mostly a big issue for the RP consequences of it than anything else. It was a huge wakeup call though, and completely killed my ego and made me realize that I was in fact still a newb, and that no amount of book learning could makeup for my lack of actual experience.