Everyone starts from somewhere and just trying to ask for info/help is definitely the right mindset for improving!
To re-emphasize what everyone else said, it's important to think about how you want to code the solution before jumping in and realizing halfway through that it doesn't work and you have to start over again. One of my professors used to recommend about 50/50 ratio for planning/implementing, and from experience I pretty much agree give or take depending on the problem, because usually if you design or do pseudocode correctly, implementing isn't too bad.
I think at this point it's just important to ask as many questions about your code as possible. Don't just read books about Java, do lots of practice, some OOP concepts/data structures that are hard to memorize without context (inheritance, polymorphism, interfaces, abstract classes, lists, hashmaps, etc.) can become a no-brainer once you see how they're used.
And also try implementing (or thinking about implementing) things different ways. Then ask, "well why does this way not work?" Or, "Why is that way better?" If you still don't get it, look for a different way of explaining that makes sense to you - everyone thinks differently, and that's okay.
And if you run into any weird syntax you don't understand, GOOGLE IT! In Java, keywords (final/constant/protected/etc.) have vastly different meanings, and learning how to properly use them can prevent bugs... And another nice thing is, a lot of the keywords' concepts carry over into other languages, so it's usually worth it to try understanding them. I definitely recommend investing the time to ask the questions now, when you're in your first semester, rather than later when a good foundation will be critical and you'd also be busier with other upper level classes xD
Another big thing that was very helpful for me was learning how to debug properly to find out what's not working. Adding print statements is fine at first, but a debugger is much more powerful. Eclipse has a good debugger.