Are you doing this in school or is this at home or in your garage welding? Do you know what gas you are using to make these welds you speak of? Do you clean the mill scale off of the piece to be welded if there is any? Mill scale will give you a bad case of the nasty on your bead appearance. It makes the puddle much more fluidy, harder to control the sag in the center and usually makes for some nice undercut in the toes of your weld. Like Lawrence said wire stickout plays a big role in short circuit transfer. I catch guys all the time running their contact tip way back in the cup witch makes for a long stickout (long stick out nasty). I hate a lot of these new guns because you can only adjust stickout by buying all kinds of different cups. I just take the ones we have and grind them back so my tip is flush with the cup or sticking out a bit past the end of the cup for slicking in a nice root on bevel plate.
I like to use a trianlgle weave method for the first pass on a fillet weld so I can get goot penetration into the root of the fillet. Experiment with different techniques and you will find one that works for you. Hope some of this info helps and keep asking questions.
Good luck!