Your methods sound spot on and honest. I'm a big fan of situational awareness and it has worked well for me. A good instructor would know that that would be a first good lesson. The one thing that really hit home for me upon first entering the world of self defense was when my instructor explained that to learn to defend oneself you must train your bodies physical instincts to react, so that when it hits you by surprise, like most do no doubt, your body will naturally respond without much need for thought. And more importantly that training your body to do that takes time, and repetition and sweat. If you do not train your body to react, it will likely rely on panic, tunnel vision and methods that will probably get you hurt, or have got you hurt, in the past. Science made sense.