That apparently was my first win against my genius teacher.
The eight month had me failed totally at substitution jutsu due to my obvious fear of getting stabbed with shuriken and kunai and indeed I did get stabbed multiple times but only flesh injury.
Within all these times though, I never stopped getting beat up by the genius, if anything he increased the tempo as I was now able to block a few hits, in summary I was a passively defensive fighter and ended up losing even more. A defensive fighter who could not use a simple substitution jutsu, I could not boast about caring for my life in battle then. This month was about me taking a beating without ever retaliating back or optimistically this month was about me maintaining my calm in battle and getting rid of fear and impulsive emotions.
At the ninth month it was no longer a one sided spar, it was a fullblown spar with jutsu involved and if I had to count how many trees saved me up until he used that sharingan of his that is.
And at some point the thrill of the battle with your life on the line became enjoyable to both of us, a new and improved way to use everything weve learned and if theres anything I would say it is that I lost each and every time simply because my only edge was a better firestyle, an dhe knew that so he was always on his toe against it, meanwhile he had me each time with damn shurikens and strings and in a face to face combat. If I had to say the gain from this month it would be my ability to use substitution jutsu, the downside being, I have to get hit to use it and there was a high probability it wouldn't work.
On the tenth month I got creative and decided to use a shadow clone of mine to achieve the bare passable knowledge of using the substitution jutsu and with the same shadow clone I managed to scrap a win against sasuke in the first round that is before I proceeded ot get whopped the remaining rounds.
By the eleventh month, I was a peak academy ninja by Sasuke standard, however he wondered why I never used my sharingan, with the topic brought up I had no option but to lie that it was disorienting using it, the real reason I never used it however was both it being disorienting, stamina and chakra draining although negligible, but mostly because I had not found a use for it.
I was able to use my sharingan ever since I had it and got to the village from the first month however I found no practical use to it as there were no scenarios that needed me to expend chakra that I did not know how to recover except by sleep.
This seemed to stir up some spirit in him as he felt a renewed urge for us to spar again, saying he felt I had been holding back on him when in truth I simply did not want to use my sharingan if it'll lead me to a shorter repository of shadow clones I can use.