An anonymous Mishnah at Avot 5:9 tells us how to tell a chacham—a wise and almost by definition well-behaved person—from a golem, a somewhat uncouth and unmannered soul, someone who is not yet the finished product:
שִׁבְעָה דְבָרִים בְּגוֹלָם וְשִׁבְעָה בְּחָכָם,
חָכָם: אֵינוֹ מְדַבֵּר לִפְנֵי מִי שֶׁגָּדוֹל מִמֶּֽנּוּ בְּחָכְמָה וּבְמִנְיָן,
וְאֵינוֹ נִכְנָס לְתוֹךְ דִּבְרֵי חֲבֵרוֹ, וְאֵינוֹ נִבְהָל לְהָשִׁיב, שׁוֹאֵל כְּעִנְיָן
וּמֵשִׁיב כַּהֲלָכָה, וְאוֹמֵר עַל רִאשׁוֹן רִאשׁוֹן וְעַל אַחֲרוֹן אַחֲרוֹן, וְעַל
מַה שֶּׁלֹּא שָׁמַע אוֹמֵר לֹא שָׁמַֽעְתִּי, וּמוֹדֶה עַל הָאֱמֶת, וְחִלּוּפֵיהֶן
בְּגוֹלָם
Seven things characterize a golem,
and seven characterize a chacham. A chacham does not speak before
one who is greater than him in wisdom or age. He does not interrupt his
fellow's words. He does not answer precipitately. His questions are on the
subject and his answers to the point. He responds to first things first and to
latter things later. As to what he did not learn, he says "I did not learn
that." He concedes the truth. The golem is the opposite.
Avot provides another clue as to how one should behave
towards others with whom one learns. At Avot 2:15 R’ Eliezer teaches that one
should treat one’s chaver, one’s learning partner, with the same degree
of respect that one expects to receive oneself. No-one enjoys being interrupted,
by being asked off-the-point questions or by having to listen to one’s partner making
apparently authoritative pronouncements on matters that les beyond his or her
knowledge. Worst of all is the situation in which one’s learning partners
positively know that they are wrong but they refuse to accept the truth and cling
stubbornly to the fiction that they are somehow right really, or that they
don’t deserve to be wrong. This being so, the principle of reciprocity calls
for us not to conduct ourselves in any way that we would find annoying or
offensive if others do the same to us.
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