Well, I received my personalized lesson plan from GT instructor Dave Celentano. I studied it carefully for the better part of a day, and as promised, here is my analysis.

Dave's core philosophy of learning apparently centers around students doing one lesson at a time and not deviating from that lesson in any way until it is definitively mastered. He repeatedly emphasizes the importance of remaining laser focused and not allowing one's self to get distracted by other course lessons, songs, licks, scales or anything else being served up on the GT site. Inexplicably, Dave then goes on to repeatedly violate that guiding principle by laying out an agenda that requires me to work simultaneously (during the same practice session) on a mix of advanced course lessons, scales, music theory, metronome work, improvisation, backing track play alongs, and perfecting a very challenging SRV song (Mary Had a Little Lamb). Every session, every day, a frantic juggling act.

Moreover, Dave envisions me finishing the entire lesson plan in just four weeks, while working on it for 30 to 60 minutes per day. That's absolutely ludicrous. It's a maniacal recipe for crushing frustration and certain failure. I'm just blown away that a professional musician and music teacher, with 35 years of teaching experience, would impose something like this on someone with my meager skill set; something that must have been clearly elucidated by the lengthy detailed questionnaire that I completed beforehand.

And to top it all off, Dave posted my lesson plan in the form of a DOC file created on a Mac with Word 97. That's right, a word processor from 1997. Not surprisingly, I couldn't open it in with the version of Word that comes with Windows 11. I had to go to Adobe's website and use their free document converter to create a PDF version of the lesson plan. And then, Dave gave me attitude when I suggested that he start using a word processor from this century, or that he at least convert his archaic documents to PDF before posting them.

I'd post the lesson plan here for your perusal, but that would likely get me booted off the site... again. Cancel culture, baby - it's still the name of the game.

Sascha