My hiking partner could only get 1 week off, so I asked a guy at an outfitter what section would be a good 1 week section for my first trip on the AT?
He suggested starting at the NOC in North Carolina and hiking north to Clingman's Dome, 69 miles, would be a good first hike. I tried to find that guy later... It was a very difficult section for a first timer. - but we actually finished it a day ahead of schedule because we had figured in an extra day in case of injury or any unknowns.

Since then, continuing to do one week sections, I went back and started at the beginning in GA, starting at the approach trail and hiking to Dick's Creek Gap, Then coming back and hiking Dick's Creek Gap to NOC, trying to keep the sections in order.

That hasn't worked out, because the next section we scheduled was to hike the entire Great Smoky Mountain National Park, since our first hike only covered half of it. Well, we only got half way through it again, due to a sore knee. I came back solo to do the park last March - but instead of doing a thru of the park, I parked at the north end, hiked back to Clingman's Dome, then turned around and hiked back to my truck. I have now hiked the park twice.

The next section would be from Davenport gap, north - but due to drought and fires, I'm about to skip ahead a bit and driving up to Damascus in a few hours and doing about 85 miles north of Damascus.

I have a large AT map poster and a narrow AT map poster that I'm going to mount and use pins and/or a sharpie to track my progress. So far, I haven't forgotten any of the sections I've done - but I can only imagine after a while, it would happen if I don't write or mark them down somewhere.