Straighter lines, rounder circles, smoother ellipses: how I will eventually become a better illustrator

I borrowed a book on observational drawing from the library. Finally. It teaches all the basics, things my instructor doesn't care for. I like our advanced level. It's good to brush up on the basics sometimes.

The skills they tell you to develop first? Straighter lines. I. Suck. I said the same to my teacher a year ago. Can't draw 'em straight to save my life. Surely it can't be that hard. If I keep on drawing 'em, hundreds at a time, something's gotta give. They make you draw parallel lines, grids, and so forth too. Advanced techniques for simple improvements. I love it. Nothing more relaxing than drawing straight lines all afternoon.

I'm worse at drawing round circles. So very bad. Thought of writing a piece of code to verify if my circles were getting better. No point in that. I'm not at that level yet. How does one know when to turn the pen around! Larger pieces are particularly tricky: where does the 'curve' begin and line end? So sad.

Ellipses are just advanced versions of circles. So you can guess how good I'm at drawing them. You need to be consistently bad at drawing circles, on opposite ends!

My approach is to throw more time at it. The usual. Something should change at some point. Progress takes time, they say. But when you notice, you've crossed the threshold. That threshold better be coming fucking fast, cos' I don't see it on the horizon!