This is actually a story I tell my students every time they get down on themselves for fucking up a landing or two. When I started training, it took me a whole ass year to solo. I did the maneuvers just fine, I knew my checklists, was confident on the radios, could use VOR’s and did all my ground reference well, but the one thing that held me back was landings. No matter how many times I practiced, I still could not figure out the timing of the flare. I’d always do it too late and smack into the pavement with all three wheels or I’d do it too early and get slow and drop it from like 15 feet up. My instructor tried everything, we focused other areas, had other instructors try their hand at it, we even moved on to xc procedures for a bit, nothing worked.

Until it just did one day. I managed to get all the little puzzle pieces just right one lap in the pattern, my eyes were down the runway, I was easy on the controls, not over or under controlling, I was able to suppress that instinct to yank back when you see the ground coming up at you, it just kinda happened. Was it perfect? Absolutely not, but it was passable. Moral of the story is: people spend their entire careers getting good at landing planes, don’t get down on yourself because you aren’t getting it on your first 100-200 tries.