Looking back, I don’t think I ever thought about my NSS, ever. If I finished a flight and no one said, “Do that over, idiot.” Or “Man, what were you thinking?” then I was doing OK. I knew, almost immediately, when I fucked up and I worked to fix the failure. When primary was over no one told us our “grades,” they gave us the choice to rank jets, helicopters, and multi-engine and we got one. I will say one thing was certain - the instructors knew my strengths (good monkey skills) and weaknesses (slow learner on instrument stuff) better than I did.