Is it important to choose your own art materials? How does it help you as a student? As a artist?

I think that it is important to be able to choose our own materials that we want to work with, because generally people choose the material that they're best with and most comfortable. I also think that its important to maybe let the teacher choose there's materials sometimes to try new things because you might realize that you like a different material than your usual. I think it helps me as a student and a artist because it's giving me a bigger variety of materials and different types and styles of art that I can try to do!