@Georganne  thanks!  Yeah, I need to also practice with a metronome more.  Whenever I sit down and do it I improve, but I hate doing it lol.

@coolpinkone actually, I appreciate advice from anyone.  Unless it's something my teacher says to absolutely not do, I'll do it or at least run it by him first.  When I practice I usually start out with playing open strings while focusing on not moving my shoulder to warm up (rosinedup mentioned in the chat that I'm still doing it).  Then ill do scales and then go through my songs.  I'll start with the basic version and then gradually move up to the more advanced version.  If I make a mistake I'll stop and play that section of the song correctly a few times before adding it back in to thee full song.  Then I'll work on the song in currently learning.  Sometimes if I find myself going out of time I'll go through scales again.  And sometimes I'll make a mistake in a song which reminds me of another song and try and pick that out lol.

thanks for the critique!