There are different types of statistics courses. I’m an undergraduate in psych, so right now I’m in the “Intro to Statistics for Psychology” class. Here’s my experience:
When you first look at the textbook resist the anxiety because the first few weeks are very straightforward, and built up my confidence. Then things got more complicated, but if you keep up you should be okay. Here is my best advice for success (seriously pay attention): buy a notebook and start by writing the key terms, then summarizing the chapter. Record all the formulas, steps, etc. Then do all of the “homework” questions in the textbook (on separate loose papers put in a small binder) and any additional programs you are using (I use SPSS and MyStat Lab by Pearson). Make sure you finish learning and practicing a certain chapter BEFORE the lecture on it. That way your questions will be clarified by the prof. This will optimize how much you get out of your lectures by eons. If you haven’t even studied what the lecture is on beforehand then you’re just going to sit there in a panic (I’ve been there).
Please don’t fall behind, when that happens then stats becomes even more overwhelming than it already is. Write the date of when you start each chapter and gauge how many days per chapter of work it takes you (I work on this for about 2 hours everyday). Then you won’t fall into denial if you get behind. You’ll know based on the number of days it takes to do each chapter/start the next one. When I don’t have dates recorded I tend to pity myself and take “breaks” even when I’m destined to fall behind without realizing.
GO TO ALL OF YOUR LABS. This is one mistake I’ve made this semester. They are very easy and you are graded on them. Simple mark boosters right there. Another helpful resource is peer tutoring. I go with a friend to a tutor every once in awhile (we combine our free tutoring hours). This provides that one-on-one help with going through steps.
Make a list of formulas and symbols as you learn them. This helps to make it all a little more manageable.
So, for what you will learn: frequency tables/histograms, mean, median, mode, central tendency & variability, z scores, samples and populations, then hypothesis testing, one-tailed/two-tailed, the distribution of means, standard errors, confidence intervals, then effect size, power, t test for single sample and for dependent means, then for independent means. Then you will analyze variance and that is the farthest my class has gotten. That was all in order by the way.
When are you starting the course?