Things focused on: Macro in first 10:00 (50 SCVs, marines, marauders, medivacs)
Completion of Focus: Started out horrendous, ended MUCH better but still needs work (40/50 SCVs).
End of Day Placement: Bronze (Top 25)
Okay, well today was the first day of the new ladder and I was getting tired of practice games. I was going to try and play at least 10 games with each race in the practice league, but after 6 games I didn't want to play Protoss anymore right now and after playing some single player zerg I definitely don't want to do that... Sure it's easy to get a big rush early but that's not the ONLY thing I want to do and I don't understand it enough to play longer right now, so Zerg is going on the back burner.
So to make a long story short I skipped the last of my practice league and jumped on the ladder with mixed results. Obviously I got put into the Bronze league, because I belong in the bronze league! I have almost no experience playing this or games like this in any competitive fashion and therefore am the epitome of newb.
My very first placement game I lost to a guy who did a ling rush... also for some reason even though I had 1 marine fighting 1 ling the ling had enough time to kill an SCV and then run over and kill the marine before he was killed while being shot in the face the whole time... I figured that a marine would take a ling 1v1 since they get 2 lings for the cost of one marine. Apparently I was wrong.
After that I was jumpy and over protecting against a really early ling rush and my macro sucked hardcore. Slowly but surely my macro started improving (but still sucked) through other games and a few wins came with it.
My overall impression of playing on the ladder compared to the practice games is what I thought it would be. Having ways into my base without chopping them down is a huge change (and a reason I was tempted to skip the practice league entirely) and that as I thought, macro reins supreme. I have been working hard on macro practice and it is paying off, but I still have a long ways to go.