I can make a video of my driving, capturing the RPMs with my phone, and the street with my dash cam.
For upshift, I generally do at 3K up to 4K. So like you say, maybe I need to shift earlier when in 1st to 2nd, there is almost no speed gain from dead stop to 3K being 1st, even though the car sounds like its moving fast lol. It's kind of funny, doing all that work, not going anywhere. Is this what people mean by "rice"? Maybe 1st is only to get the car moving, get those wheels pushing, because it has so much power it but there is almost no acceleration until between 2nd and 3rd.
3rd gear is where I get major boost in speed. I'm also somewhat gentle on the pedal, I'm not flooring. I'm gradually pressing the gas, gradually releasing the clutch.
For downshifts, I do at 2K rpm, which puts rpm at 3K~ rpm in the next gear. I noticed something interesting when downshifting that if I don't press the gas, it feels like it doesn't want to take to the new gear in speed when the clutch engages. For lack of better word, it feels and sounds "wrong". So when I tap the gas pedal as the clutch engages, and it takes just fine! No idea what this means.
And for sudden needs to downshift to make a turn I clutch->neutral->break->turn (moving by momentum in neutral), then to accelerate I try to guess at where I can safely pick back up at based on the mph, which comes out around...
@1st: 0-5ph
@2nd: 5-15mph
@
3Rd: 15-25mph
@4rd: 25-35mph
@5th: 35-45mph
I don't always turn in neutral though. I keep the gear in gear, break and turn and pray that the car doesn't stall as the mph drop as I break for the turn.
Back in my first week of owning the car, I made some bad mistakes with downshifting. If the gear is too low, the engine revs up high, freaked the hell out of me. (thankfully never redlined). Gear too high and car sounds like he's gurgling low pitch. Gotten better with knowing when to downshift just by looking at the meter.
Another interesting thing I found, I'm not sure if its bad or ok, but when I put the shifter in 2nd from 1st, I can hear the sound of thick metal snapping into place, like a hard "thud". I wonder if people outside my car can hear that sound? It's almost like cracking a neck. Does not always happen though. I once somehow also got the car stuck in a stall loop where it would turn off, then turn back on, then turn off, then back on, car was chugging. I'm still sad that happened, hurt me deep. that was my 2nd week, never happened again. But there was another time where the car stalled, turn off, and somehow recovered. And I stalled once trying to impress from friends. Embarrassing as fuck.
Fun learning process, though. Apparently steep, according to some articles.