[rhino]

Some thoughts in no particular order . . .

Teaching and communication ability are a lot more important to me than "been there, done that." I'm more interested in what someone can teach me than I am in whether or not they are a sEEkRIt sQUIrreL or super soldier cop man.

I place little value on reviews from people who have no basis for comparison to other instructors/schools.

I place little value on recommendations from people who are clearly brainwashed into believing their pet school or instructor is "the best," so anything they do has to be good.

I won't patronize an instructor or school that perpetuates a caste system where military and/or police officers are somehow superior to "regular people."

I won't patronize a**holes, regardless of whether or not all of the k00l kIDz think they're "the best" (especially when they aren't really the best).

I seek instructors whose methods and abilities will help me maximize my skills as an individual (or perhaps as part of a small team of buddies) rather than those whose products are clearly more geared toward getting a group of people all doing exactly the same thing the exact same way.

I seek instructors who can effectively articulate why their chosen methods and techniques are what they consider to be the best way to do things. Sometimes "it works in the street" is more than adequate as an explanation, and sometimes it's either a cop-out or a euphemism for "I don't know."

I avoid instructors and schools whose advertsing focuses too much on round counts and gear. In all too many cases, the number of rounds fired seems to be some kind of status symbol. I've only been in one such class, and the disappointments outnumbered and outweighed the good points by far. I much prefer classes where every shot fired serves some educational purpose. I can practice and blast ammo on my own time.


I typically discount and rarely completely read reviews from students that focus almost exclusively on gear and how many rounds they fired. Guess what ... I don't care what kind of guns and gear you had or what the others in the class had! I want to know what you did, how you did it, and how it worked for you.