Spin awareness is definitely weird at first, and I wholeheartedly agree that it's less scary after a bit of experience. Question: did you cover spin recovery? I was under the impression this was basically never done until CFI or CFII.
My instructor, an old F4 pilot, put us in a spin shortly after practicing stalls in our C152. First we did plain stalls, no big deal. Then uncoordinated stalls (which easily rolls the plane full over on its back). After that, he demonstrated a spin entry and recovery and had me do it. I probably had ~5h at that point. (But easily hundreds of hours in desktop simulators.)
On Dogfights, there was an F4 veteran from Vietnam who used to deliberately spin his F4 as a radical airbrake to force overshoots. The enemy pilot would overshoot, then he'd recover on their tails.
Interesting. We had no one on our tail at that particular time, so I can't testify to the effectiveness of that maneuver... ;-P
Sounds like something John Boyd would do (read his biography!).
The spin I mentioned came from the first time practicing full-power departure stalls when I held the yoke back too long and the airplane rolled over. Did it a couple more times with the same result and when he tried it, it also happened so we concluded there was something wrong with the control surfaces and returned home.
It's not required for Private Pilot which I was training for at the time (early 90's), but my instructor planned to practice it. I lost interest in flying after about 45 hours, so we never got around to it. We did some unusual attitude recovery under the hood as part of my introduction to Instrument flight (the bit they do so if you accidentally fly into a cloud you can stay in control long enough to fly back out), and that was really a lot of fun.
In the US, you don't have to do any sort of spins all the way up until your CFI. All you have to know about (and be able to explain to your examiner) is "spin awareness" - essentially how it happens, what causes it, and how to get out of it.
I think it depends on the instructor, and the instructor's assessment of the student. My instructor put us in a spin and said "your plane"! The 2nd time she did that I knew exactly what to do.
At least in finland and with gliders (GPL) it belongs in the curriculum to practice spins.