Ok I've just done my trial flight. It was really awesome. I was quite nervous in the beginning especially with moderately bumpy conditions due to heat effects and wind, but felt quite comfortable fairly quickly.
To answer my own question... every aircraft is different so there's no definitive answer, which partially explains the range of responses above. In the case of the 152 I felt there was no "definitive" neutral position with the pitch.
On the ground the elevators are actually in a fully down position. When you pull the yoke back to take off, you'll actually have to find the centre position with a combination of the pitch control and trim.
The controls also became a lot easier and smoother as we picked up altitude and speed.
As for turning it did work somewhat like I expected. I would turn the yoke and the plane reaches a certain angle of bank, and I can return the yoke to the center position and the plane would keep turning at that angle. To level out of the turn I need to push the yoke in the other direction.
We did a little aerobatics which I was really nervous about. The instructor did a couple of barrel rolls for me which wasn't as scary as I thought they would be. During the actual roll I didn't feel any g force but I did feel quite a bit when pulling out of the roll.
I was not brave enough to do loops, which I'm now kicking myself for.
Lastly I did really overthink a lot of things. Before we took I asked the instructor about how I handle the yoke when taking off, how I would correct for the slipstream using the rudder etc.... She said I didn't need to worry about any of that. Basically I could have gone in with absolutely zero knowledge of planes and it would still have been perfectly ok.
Last edited by mkqq; 1st Apr 2017 at 09:53.
Reason: correct typo