Stick Shift Questions

I just got my car on Friday and its my first stickshift car. I learned how to drive stick on other people's cars and I can manage, but I'm not very good. In fact it seems like I'm alot worse in my 330 than I am in any other stickshift car. I cringe whenever I have a bad start and the car surges forward a couple of times.

Couple of questions:

1) When starting out I manage to get the best results by moving the clutch up quickly to a certain point while giving it gas and then pausing and continuing slowly after the car starts to move. Does this sound right? It seems that there's often a pause and then the car goes back to accelerating.

2) The smoothest shift from 1st to second for me is right around 2500rpms or so. Not too much gas, fairly slow clutch movement.

3) How slowly do I need to move the clutch on other shifts? Is it bad for the car if its not 100% smooth?

4) Downshifts. If I slow on the highway for a toll (EZPass) can I deccelerate to 20mph and then downshift to 3rd (from 5th) and accelerate again?

5) Downshifts. If I don't rev match how slow should I let out the clutch? Is that hard decceleration normal?

Am I doing serious damage to my anything in my car other than the clutch? I'm willing to bite the bullet and replace that after I've gotten good if need be, but if there's other stuff that I'm really hurting then...

Thanks,
Rourke