Ways to practice

You can of coarse go grab a plane at your school, but unless you have deep pockets you will not be able to do this for long, because it gets very expensive. Your flight school will probably have some flight simulators that you can hop in and practice for free. The only problem with them is that most of them you need at least two people to run, because there needs to be a person setting things up and failing things while you fly. If you use the simulator at the flight school you will be able to use that time as simulated time. The best thing that I have found was FSX. I think that this program is great for student pilots, and even pilots in general. Like AOPA says a good pilot is always learning. You can use this program and get a feel for the cockpit of the plane that you fly and if it is not on there you can go to many sites online and get yours. If you are a private pilot you can practice steep turns and stalls, but the best practice for instrument pilots. You can follow VOR's and NDB's, and also shoot ILS's and GPS approaches. You can put the deck at mins and pop out right at the ground. This is very good practice and gets you used to the feeling of not being able to see anything. It is also a great way to get you used to radio calls. Saitek makes great flight controls which helps even more. I use these all the time and it helps greatly. I also use a joystick with the rudder pedals a lot for a more realistic feeling on the extra and edge.