Achievement of the Day or Week
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Pallas She's been teaching beginner kids also and used some strategies with them. If I could go back in time to when I first began playing any instruments, I'm sure many of her pointers would have been helpful from the start.
Edit. Sorry, I probably misread your post. I also often find reading more efficient than videos, except when they are showing how to play etc.
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candela I had no idea, thank you! Sometimes a physical item makes it easier for me to remember things vs. having links or notes (or saved videos) online. I am a cheapskate and hardly ever purchase new books at full price, but this one might be worth it.
By the way...I have some musician's earplugs (i.e. "noise cancellers") on order. I really appreciate you sharing your story in the other thread.
My achievement today was utilizing a chord within Reverie, into the jazz hit Autumn Leaves.
I shared in some forums that I play completely by ear, and the only reason I even started learning some "classical piano" was to improve my technique (prior to that, I only played non-classical). In the last year, as I've gotten exposed to Chopin, Liszt, Rachmaninoff, etc., I've been picking their chord progressions and integrating it into more modern stuff as well.
I have an innate ability to connect dots between songs (e.g., Canon in D paired with Vitamin C Graduation; Moonlight Sonata with Fantasie Impromptu, etc)., and most recently paired Liszt un Sospiro with the theme song from the show This is Us.
So it's reverse of what I've seen, where some folks will do a "jazz version of Chopin" I'm using the Classical pieces as inspiration 
Stub I started it again a few weeks ago as one of my summer pieces while lessons are on hiatus, and, wow, magic happened! I can play it! Sometimes it feels as though progress is nonexistent, or glacially slow, and that can be discouraging. But I have learned something in the last two years, and I am thrilled.
That's so true! Magic happens when you're not constantly watching your progress. Wait a year and what was hard is suddently easy.
I constantly surprise myself at how quickly and easily I learn pieces that felt like climbing Mt. Everest before. Like just last week I managed to learn the first section of Rach's Elégie and this week I'm coasting through the middle section and climax (although I probably won't get through it all this week). That's like 2 pages per week of pretty advanced music and besides a couple of more technical spots it doesn't even feel very difficult. Last time I tried it this piece felt way too hard for me to handle.
Well, that's my achievement of the week.
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I started working on an arrangement of the Haydn "Surprise" a month ago. The original is an orchestral piece from Symphony #94 in G. The slow Andante movement is in C in 3 pages. Playing this piece is like playing a Liszt arrangement of a Beethoven Symphony.
At age 11 I came across an arrangement in an absolute beginner book (just 8 bars in 2 lines with large print). Recently found another version from [https://makingmusicfun.net/htm/printit_piano_sheet_music_index](https://) with 24 bars (from the first section). A few years ago downloaded a piano arrangement from the Haydn original Andante with 156 bars. The piece starts off in C major (48 bars), then C minor (25 bars) and back to C major (81 bars). After a month of learning I'm down to the last 2 lines of the piece. Still under tempo but nonetheless learned all the notes.
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The achievement of the last week (more like two weeks) that makes me really happy is learning F# minor harmonic scale. The D-F-F# fingering felt so tricky at first I couldn't imagine playing them accurately hands together. But I just kept at it, and these old fingers slowly learned the new trick. When I finally was able to play it 2-octaves hands together at my target tempo, I was so happy.
The other one is counting out loud. I went back to The Entertainer, a short piece I practiced many many times, and tried on it. Boy, it's like learning a new piece all over again. And I never thought I could be out-of-breath just saying one-two-three-four! (I wish I could count in my native tongue which would be easier 
). I can finally do it now at reduced tempo. Along the way I also realized a few subtle rhythmic inaccuracies I was making, mainly associated with stops. This is hard, but this is working.
This was from last week (old news!). I've been working on Maria Szymanowska's Nocturne in Bb for a couple of months. It's in one of my books and I've wanted to play it for awhile but was very intimidated by the jumps on the last page (the most dramatic bit is pictured below). It's actually gone pretty well since I started putting some time into it. Last week I was able to reach my goal tempo, although (1) that's not solid yet, and (2) at best, it's probably about 50% of the tempo you'll see on YouTube performances. 
I'm used to that though! It's still a big confidence boost to be able to play something that I assumed was totally out of reach.
Just in the last week, I started working on a « fun summer piece » , it is Johny May’s version of Despacito. It is actually much easier to play than it looks, the notes (harmonies) are actually quite easy while the challenge rests more with the rhythm and velocity. It is almost completely under my fingers now save for the last 10% of the song. I can already play large segments on « autopilot » mode now, and just need to polish it further.
While not the style of music I usually play, I am enjoying some aspects of its latin jazz riffs which were unknown to me. Just thought i would post on this fun thread!
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Knocked out a new piece to reasonable standard after working on it for a week (bearing in mind I do not practice for hours each day). To be fair, it is short and leans heavily on skills built previously, but sometimes it is good to take on something just because it sounds interesting and is an easy win in a week with lots of non-piano work needing my attention.
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Wonderful! Best wishes on a long and fruitful collaboration with your new teacher!
That's great news Pallas! I'm happy for you
They say you only know a scale once you can play it hands together in contrary motion. Well, it's been 11 days since I learned F# minor scale in parallel motion, and now I can finally play it in contrary motion at half of my target tempo. This one is just so tricky!
In the mean time, I am really glad that I finished Section 1 of Faber Adult Piano Adventures Classics Book 1. There are 12 pieces in this section named "Beginning Classics: Easy arrangements with simply harmonies". I really enjoyed them.