It isn't hard, it's just stupid. Stick is a throwback to the dark ages of automobile design before anybody could figure out how to make an efficient automatic. It's like grinding flankstake instead of buying hamburger. It's like ironing a shirt instead of buying wash and ware. And just imagine everytime that hand gets close to something really interesting as it works it's way up a thigh it's time to shift. There is a powerful mythology going around that the stick is cool. Probably that's the result of boy children with no real significant achievments to their name thinking that mastering something slightly more difficult than standoing on one leg, shifting, is one of those defining transitional rites of passage that defines them as men. It's all a bunch of brainwashed cool swager and bravado that is essentially bas ackwards and absurd. Shifting shows it's true colors in the two hour traffic jam when you shift several thousand times to get a mile down the road. Now that is really coo. Shift put in the clutch break. let outhte clutch, put in the clutch break over and over again. Weeeee is this fun. And while you're developing a blister and premature heart disease, the guy in the nest car is fondeling his, his ...his coffee espresso. You'd love to give him the finger, but you'd kill the engine.