Your interaction with your teachers is very similar to my experiences training more junior officers to stand “Officer of the Deck” on submarines (Officer of the Deck is the position ultimately in charge of everything having to do with the boat, internally and externally. Think of the role Picard or Riker assume when they sit in the “Captain’s Chair” on the bridge in Star Trek. In real life people sleep and do other stuff so officers more junior than the CO/XO take on that role most of the time).
A lot of the same second guessing and reluctance to make decisions happens when people are training for this position. One small thing that makes a big difference in my experience is telling my students explicitly at the outset that I expect them to make decisions for themselves but I’ll stop them if they’re about to do something dangerous or horribly wrong. If one of the officers does something that’s suboptimal but otherwise ok I’ll let him see it through and we’ll talk about it later. Even if your instructors haven’t told you this explicitly I’d bet that they have a similar mindset. If you just internalize the fact that you’ll be stopped before you do something extremely bad it might go a long way towards letting you relax enough to practice making quick judgements and acting on them.
Obviously if an instructor isn’t around to stop you this advice is terrible.
Your interaction with your teachers is very similar to my experiences training more junior officers to stand “Officer of the Deck” on submarines (Officer of the Deck is the position ultimately in charge of everything having to do with the boat, internally and externally. Think of the role Picard or Riker assume when they sit in the “Captain’s Chair” on the bridge in Star Trek. In real life people sleep and do other stuff so officers more junior than the CO/XO take on that role most of the time).
A lot of the same second guessing and reluctance to make decisions happens when people are training for this position. One small thing that makes a big difference in my experience is telling my students explicitly at the outset that I expect them to make decisions for themselves but I’ll stop them if they’re about to do something dangerous or horribly wrong. If one of the officers does something that’s suboptimal but otherwise ok I’ll let him see it through and we’ll talk about it later. Even if your instructors haven’t told you this explicitly I’d bet that they have a similar mindset. If you just internalize the fact that you’ll be stopped before you do something extremely bad it might go a long way towards letting you relax enough to practice making quick judgements and acting on them.
Obviously if an instructor isn’t around to stop you this advice is terrible.