My best answer would be to remember that your courses are not there to teach you the language. Those courses are to provide you an understanding of syntax and proper program layout, which actually breaks down to simply problem solving.

Also, watch to see if you’re trying to jump in head first yourself. ;) If you’re opening up a compiler after reading what the program is supposed to do, you’re jumping ahead of yourself. Take some time to write out the problem on some paper, break it down into sections, then find out how you can solve those sections with java. And also remember it’s not out of bounds to use resources such as google to get a better grasp on ideas :D

If you have any other questions, you can send me an email at wbarnhill [at] lander.edu and I’ll offer whatever help I can.