You definitely improved in just the small amount of stick welding you did. The good news is you can still have a way to weld 2 pieces together after you run out of shielding gas with tig and mig. The average "Joe" won't ever need to produce beautiful stick welds for any reason, let alone for passing a cert.

I can't even tell you how many of those 4 sided fillet blocks I welded in school. After a couple hundred passes each block weighs a ton, and you begin to wonder why you signed up to be a weldor in the first place! For me, the reason was that I wanted to learn tig more than anything, but obviously preparing for stick certification comes first. It was definitely worth it in the end though. I've stick welded a handful to times in the past 10 years, but tig welded a great deal in that time.