I can only speak for my current situation which may be different from others. I go to Utah where we have only two very small classes and we are quite accelerated. In our case, the labs are open for practice pretty much 24/7 and people are always willing to help you. We have an unlimited supply of teeth and burs to practice on whereas other schools I know of have make you buy any teeth past the first three or something like that. Not the case with us, blow through as many teeth as you want to learn the procedures correctly. Basically for us labs start out with 1 hr of lecture then about 3 hrs of work in the lab. Yes, your skills and speed do improve as you practice. Some people improve more quickly than others of course but in our class everyone is doing fine, even those of us who struggled initially. I hope some of this info helped, though I would suggest getting another opinion where my experience may be quite different from others.
