Ah so you're one of the people who think that only formal education can teach you something. For the record, most things I know I learned on my own, school barely teached me anything. I'm French and self taught english over a few years to a pretty much fluent level as you can see. First of all, I didn't say I'm not studying chemistry, I am studying chemistry at school, just not as advanced as what I am learning on my own. The benzene thing is a one time thing, not the amateur chemistry part. I can list the experiments I have done so far, which would be that practical experience you're talking about. The "right tools" I may not have access would only be a fume hood. I have all appropriate PPE, proper borosilicate glassware, dedicated equipment for chemistry, a hotplate, vacuum filtration equipment etc. Only things I don't have would be things like a glovebox, schlenk line or also equipments that pretty much no amateur chemists would have anyway. I'm also waiting for a package containing a bunch of glassware, some round bottoms, addition funnels, funnels, metal and plastic keck clips, glass syringe, filter paper, beakers, lab stands, clamps, lab jacks and more. Among some of the things I have done are:

- Distillation of ether (and synthesis by dehydration of ethanol in a few weeks)

- Distillation of ethanol from standard alcohols and denatured alcohols

- Preparation of Chloroform through the haloform reaction

- Preparation of Chlorobutanol by reaction of acetone with chloroform in alkaline conditions

- Preparation of Biodiesel from waste oil through transesterification

- Synthesis of luminol from scratch (from phthalic anhydride and hydrazine sulfate)

- Synthesis of hydrazine sulfate (Hoffman degradation with bleach)

- Multiple nitrations (including 3-nitrophthalic acid, nitrocellulose, nitroglycerin, picric acid and more)

- Synthesis of some esters such as butyl acetate and methyl salicylate

- Extraction of piperine and caffeine (caffeine extraction with chloroform and sodium carbonate that I also made myself)

- Preparation of phenol from salicylic acid

- Synthesis of thymolphthalein and phenolphthalein more or less from scratch (except the thymol)

- Extraction of plasticizers from vinyl gloves

- Steam distillation of cloves to obtain clove oil

Not included in this list are many things such as some distillations, preparation of simple compounds like sodium acetate and a few other things I've probably forgotten. This also doesn't include any and all experiments that might've been done for fun (things like glycerol and kmno4 etc. or making small amounts of manganese heptoxide)

You can think whatever you want, but I do believe you just misread most of what I said and you're the kind of guy who thinks that all amateur chemists are retards making explosives or drugs. Sorry to break it to you, but that's not how it works :)