DP - Shot choice and size

One of the most difficult parts of the digital photography course has been deciding which shots should make the cut and truly show what I've learned. Sometimes, looking too deep into things may make for poor choices. More than one picture has missed the cut due to minor deficiencies. These shots look really nice until I started to think about what I'd read.
On the same note, getting the pictures down to the required size can be rough too. This weekend, I talked photography with a friend who's pretty into the whole thing, with a $1500 camera, lightweight graphite tripod and countless other things. While looking through his recent shots, I noticed that the average picture size was between 55 and 60 megs each! Through this class, I'm supposed to get up to 10 shots sent at no more than 2 megs for the lot. That has posed its own problems. I have multiple versions of some as learned how to make the initial ones smaller without cropping them down. I really want to show the pictures without any form of editing, but have conceded and cropped a few. Getting a feeling for the setting before taking the picture should lead to less editing later.
During my car show, which my car failed to make, I spent time with a friend's girlfriend who happened to be an art/photography major. She was using a 1967 camera of some sort, which meant that each of her shots had to be well though out and perfect, as there would be no manipulation later. She helped me with a few things and suggested a few shots, but none fit the current assignment. For the first time in a long time, the rains held off and not water shots were available. I did get a few usable shots, some of which I though were interesting, that may make a later assignment, but I'll have to see what happens.
Still it comes down to choosing the pictures that best show the desired results. Sometimes it hurts to leave some of them out, but between the requirements and the size limits, something's got to give. I just hope I'm choosing pictures that show what they're supposed to!