Should I Worry About The "Rules" of Fiction?

The other night in my YA Novel class, we were talking about the usual things: structure, pacing, scene vs. summary, what makes a good first chapter, how to weave thematic and emotional hints into your story early so later events feel organic, how a story makes promises to the reader, etc, and my students kept coming back to different "rules" of fiction they'd learned over the years. These "rules"