Hi!
This depends a bit on the way you are planning to connect your model to your joint. But with most of the common methods, the pivots don't have to match.
Since you are a beginner and in a course for rigging, you will probably use a Skincluster, which is the intended way to connect a mesh to a joint. It is the method that makes up 99% of all mesh to joint connections you will encounter.
For this method, the position of you mesh pivot does not matter at all. It is good form to have the mesh transforms frozen before you use a skincluster, but even if you don't do that you will most likely not encounter any problems.
The mesh Pivot also doesn't matter with other common ways of connecting, like parent constraints or parenting
There are only ways of connecting your mesh to your joint, that I can think of right now, in which the mesh pivot not matching could pose a problem.
1) Direct Value connection, this method directly matches up local space values from one object to another. Obviously if the pivots don't match, the motion will be different between the objects. But this isn't commonly used to connect joints to mesh.
2) Matrix based constraints. But this is a very advanced technique, which is why there is more room for error, and you won't encounter this until you become a specialised rigger.
This is also not a common technique to connect Mesh to joints, but I've seen it in some rigs.
You should be fine.
I hope it helps!
