Welcome Patrick,
You will find a wealth of experience and knowledge among the contributors here. Pilots are generally a very mentoring group, eager to share their wisdom and experience to help others as the progress too!
For your first few lessons, arrive prepared and relaxed. Prevent distractions to your attention. It will seem overwhelming at first, don't worry about that, you simply cannot grasp everything, and you don't need to at the beginning. Allow your mind to absorb the basics of handling the plane. Avoid fixating on any instrument, look outside most of the time. If I were to tell you only one instrument to look at for the first 5 hours of your training, it would be the little black ball, which should nearly always sit neatly between the two lines - the slip indicator. Your instructor will brief you on all of the instruments, but that most simple one is one of the more important, and your learning how to fly well with it, will greatly improve you flying skill, grace and safety later in your career. Still, don't fixate on it, but refer to it occasionally.
Understand that as you learn more, the basics will become muscle memory, and ingrained in your mind, then you're ready to absorb more, don't overload your senses, or nothing gets learned properly! Then remember that the aircraft is designed to be a trainer, and will tolerate a little imperfection as you learn in it - it's designed to be safe and tolerant of imperfect flying. Of course your aspire to being an awesome pilot, but don't beat yourself up if you get it wrong a little as you go, your instructor will prevent your getting it too wrong!
Then, simply enjoy the sense of freedom!