I will expand on the students trying to kill you part. The more dual given time your instructor has, the better. This may sound obvious, but that experienced instructor will be able to throw every mistake at you that they have experienced from their students. I remember thinking "they will never do that." Well, I may only have 40 hours of dual given, but I have already experienced a lot of the "stupid things" that my instructor did in the airplane. Finally, get your lesson plans done early and put some real effort into them. Most of my less than detailed lesson plans had to be completely overhauled the second time around, which took even longer.