It's occurred to that perhaps someone can learn from my experiences doing my PPL(A). I've never told many people about them; for a long time it was far too painful, and in any case I didn't have enough distance to understand what was going on. Anyway, here goes.
I started learning to fly at my local airfield more or less on impulse; the CFI was my first instructor, and was in many ways very good. But he yelled a lot, which rattled me more than I wanted to let on, and I think this affected me later on. Anyway, he left after I'd done about 10 hours, telling me that if I stayed with the instructor he'd recommended I'd be fine. I'm gonna call this guy X because after all this time I bear him no illwill - though I hated him for ages. Well, X and I got on OK at first. I know he was an hours builder; several times he complained about being there and the low pay etc. I wasn't a natural pilot; everything took me a long time, but it all went OK till I came to try to land. I just couldn't do it, for ages. I know now it was a problem I have with depth perception; had anyone tried to find this out I'd probably have sorted things out earlier. But they didn't; X merely looked fed up, confused, and told me I'd get there in the end - fair enough really in a way.
Anyway, eventually I landed the aircraft by myself for the first time. I threw a hand in the air and whooped with joy. After all, it felt like a hell of an achievment; it had taken me ages. Did X congratulate me? Did he hell; he glared at me with what I now remember as hate, and I choose my words with care. He said darkly: "I'm gonna come down on you much harder from now on". I didn't care; I had done it once so I could do it again, and that was all that mattered to me. When we finished, X proceeded to rubbish my flying, saying my circuits and keeping my altitude etc were crap. They were; I'd been concentrating on landings, feeling I could do the rest. But I was too happy to care about what he said.
I couldn't wait for the next lesson; I was sure it would now be OK. Then I was coming in to land; the approach was good. At about 50 ft from the threshold X turned to me and started a long conversation along the lines of wanting me to keep the power on and fly it along the runway and... Well, I never heard the last bit; confused, I lost concentration and bounced. X yelled at me to go around and I froze. He grabbed the controls in obvious fury for a go around, handing back control to me before I'd had a chance to calm down. I gripped the control column, close to tears. I wanted to stop the lesson, to tell him I didn't want to fly with him. But I couldn't. This was to be the day I could do it. Shaking with tension and disappointment, I nearly asked him why he'd done that, why he'd sabotaged my efforts when I had it right. But I couldn't get out the words. I decided to grit my teeth and carry on, being too new to flyng to know that you can't learn in that state. My state of mind must have been obvious to anyone with any sensitivity whatsoever, but X appeared not to notice. I couldn't manage another landing after that, unsurprisingly. With hindsight, I'm amazed I managed to fly at all.
That day coloured virtually the whole of my training. It had somehow caused a kind of block, and I couldn't land after that. I'd also lost confidence so thoroughly I could barely drive to the airfield, let alone fly. I didn't ask to change instructors, because I thought it was all my fault, and also because the ex-CFI had told me to stick with X, and said,"If you do, you'll make it". And there was no new CFI, and no-one I felt I could talk to. And I thought if I threw enough effort at the problem, I'd get there.
Eventually, someone else realised that things were going really badly, and found me another instructor. The new guy talked to me a lot, found out what had happened, and was furious with X, muttering angrily about some people being unsuitable to be instructors. He eventually got me to solo standard. Even then my problems weren't at an end - I had a tendency to panic, and very little confidence; most unlike me usually I might add. Many times I thought of giving up, but I loved flying in spite of everything, and I never ever give up.
Eventually I got my PPL. I think I had been more or less an average student at the beginning, though it's hard for me to say. But with all that had gone on, it took me almost 90 hours.
X upset several other people; one at least gave up flying because of him. Yet, to be fair, some people found him very good. I know it would have saved me a lot of time and money if I'd followed my first instincts during that disastrous lesson, and told him I wanted to stop there and then. But then, hindsight is always an exact science.
There's not much more to say. But I know WWW and some others think I sometimes come down too hard on hours building instructors, and refuse to accept that they may have a point of view. Now at least maybe you understand why.