question for guitarist

[MetalMilitia]

hmm, I was first introduced to guitar by my dad teaching me a few very simple songs like wild thing and some other random old songs by cream. Most of those where played in open chords and so i leaned those first. Then i got proper guitar lessons and learned alot of theory and i did a GCSE in music (biggest waste of time ever) which taught be scales and whatnot.
From this i feel i have a much better understanding of how to play a guitar than the people who i know that are self taught and only ever try and play songs from tabs. which i guess makes my previous advice a bit crappy but what i was trying to say was learn the theory and how a guitar actually works, i.e. how notes are set out and how octaves of the notes can be linked etc