I come from a family of overachievers who are also very competitive and therefore I hold myself to very high standards. That being said I did not anticipate getting a Pass A in CELTA. To be honest, I was concerned with my lack of knowledge going into the course and some of the observations that were made during the course because I was not able to openly receive feedback in a productive way. However, I was able to get a Pass A grade which was extremely exciting. Here are some things that I did in order to get a Pass A that I found to be helpful during the journey.

 First of all to get a Pass A in CELTA they have a graphic with performance descriptors. The categories in which you're assessed are  planning, teaching, awareness of learners, reflection, and overall performance. One of the best ways of going through the CELTA course is to be extremely informed about what you need to do and how you're being graded. If you're very very clear about those two things you should be able to pass the course with no problems. I'll link here  the official Celta syllabus and assessment guide from Cambridge University (here). For any candidates who are seriously considering taking a CELTA course this is a PDF file that you should know inside and out. It details exactly what you need to do and exactly how you're going to be assessed. By understanding those two things you will know whether or not taking a selfie course is an appropriate step for you at the moment. 

So, I worked really really hard in my intensive CELTA course and my hard work paid off. I was able to get a Pass A, and I would like to report that my marriage was intact afterwards. There is a joke amongst candidates who do CELTA courses that your personal life literally stops because Celta is the only thing that you can work on. And I can attest that that is true and that you will need to have understanding from your friends, family and loved ones because you will have no social life. It doesn't matter if you do it intensively over the course of a month like I did or if you do it extensively, you will encounter the same issues because the assignments and the tasks and the studying consumed several hours of your life. So, be prepared for that to happen. Hopefully your loved ones will understand that this is something that you want to do and need to do to become better in your profession.

 That being said, after I finished CELTA I would have liked to take a month to breathe but I wasn't able to because my semester started. Once you finish the course you will probably want to take a few months to digest all of the information that you were given. I would review the course notes again, I looked over the materials and I tried to implement things that I learned. The difficult part was having to do the revision and teaching full time. Free time is actually not a luxury that many teachers have, unfortunately. The more accurate and detailed your notes are the easier it will be for you to go back through them and revisit important teaching points.  After all, the whole point of taking this course is for you to grow as a teacher and for you to implement the things that you learned in future practice. If you have no reference to the things that you're learning then you really won't get the full benefit of the course.