but I certainly don't want to find out what it's like when turning off base, onto finals
Trust me, nobody here wants to find that out right there and then.
I don't know if your club/school offers "unusual attitude" training. Mine does. It starts in the morning with a thorough briefing about stall/spin awareness and execution, and then each participant does a 45-minute flight in an aerobatics airplane (R2160 in our case), loaded within aerobatics limits, to experience precisely these things. As this day is taught by normal qualified instructors, you can already attend while training for your PPL (although you'd have to be quite at the end of the course to get meaningful value out of it) and the hours count towards your PPL experience requirements. (As far as I'm concerned, they should even count double...
) So check around to see if something like that is offered where you are training.
Alternatively, places like Ultimate High offer Advanced PPL training which includes stall/spin awareness and such.