Yeah, I've noticed similar tendancies in 2nd.

Worked on it a bit. I got it pretty smooth most the time (except cold mornings, half asleep). Sometimes it hard to analyse what you yourself are doing (especially when it is all by feel, like this) but what I perceive myself doing is:

a combination of only lightly clutching out of first and dropping the RPMs a bit more than seems natural.

But, that may have nothing to do with it. The learning Tranny might be just compensating...