Flight Training: Post Second First Solo

If the title of this article is confusing, let me explain. I started my flight training some months earlier at a local FBO in a PA-28. I had already soloed several times before I joined a professional flight school and started flying a Cessna 152. My earlier training was so inadequate that I had to start over from stage one. I agreed and decided that I would have to chalk it up to experience. I was still spending my own cash so it was my loss.
I flew my latest solo on Sept. 10th 1990. I went up with my flight instructor the next day and practiced takeoffs and landings and flew another solo the following day, still staying in the traffic pattern. On Sept. 25th I soloed in the practice area and practiced S-turns, slow flight, turns around a point and stalls. I was ready for my dual cross-country.
Since I wasn't taking the flight schools private pilot ground course, I was learning how to read a sectional on my own. I had the weight and balance calculations down pretty good, as well as using the E6B and the other aircraft performance charts. I also got some one-on-one with my instructor. We were going to fly from Tulsa to Macalester Oklahoma. I plotted out the route the night before the trip on my sectional, marking out checkpoints along the way to save some time. I couldn't do anything else until the morning of the flight because I needed a weather report.
We took off from Tulsa that morning after about an hour of pre-flight preparation and filing a flight plan. I was learning pilotage and ded reckoning along the way. It was such a good feeling to reach a check point right on time as predicted. This was a fun flight. I was pumped up and really felt like I was learning something. On the trip back my instructor did something unexpected. He took the controls, had me put my head down and steered the plane off course. I took the controls back and had to remember the lost procedures that we practiced. I didn't do so well and was still having trouble using the VOR. He had to explain to me step by step how to get back on course which I managed to do eventually but burned up excess fuel in the process which forced me to have to recalculate the fuel and arrival time. I had a total of about thirty hours of flight time by now. My flight training was still on schedule.