I'm stuck on both Python and Swift.

From what I gathered from your question, it seems that you are watching the videos and doing just that - watching them. Then when you get to a code exercise you don't know what to do. If I am right, you can fix your problem by watching the video next to your work-space and coding along with the tutorial.

Not only that, but when the video is over, erase what the tutorial gave you and rewrite your own code. Once you have understood what is going on by rewriting your own code - or at least memorized it a bit - you will be able to complete the coding exercise more easily, and by doing so are given even more practice to help you establish that foundation. I have found this works heaps for me. I started on treehouse five days ago and I have already designed (drew on paper) a complex and responsive website design and coded it using the HTML/CSS I've learned. It took me an entire day (9 AM-11 PM) and I got stuck numerous times and had to look things up, but eventually I got there. This wouldn't have been possible if I had memorized things rather than actually understanding the HTML/CSS. The things I looked up were minor things, and I never actually copied and pasted any code.

The reason I am telling you this is because what I advised you to do is exactly what I did and it has worked for me. Either I am a prodigy or you just have bad study habits.

Hope I was able to help =)

i said several times that i've gone back and watched the videos and done the exercises several times- I thought it was pretty obvious that i meant the work in the videos, especially when i mentioned doing the Swift work in Xcode- code challenges are only done in the browser.

My apologies. Clearly I haven't dived as deep as you have so those references were meaningless to me, which is why the confusion is present. But again, WATCHING the videos over and over is different than actually CODING. By coding you get errors, and by trial and error you can solve those errors, thus finding solutions and new methods to code that you didn't learn even from the video.

I re-read your question and I have a better understanding. It seems you code along-side the videos and when you get to the code challenges and get stuck, you re-watch the videos in attempt to better understand the material. This is inefficient and ineffective. Watching repeatedly is not a crime, but doing so inefficiently is redundant. When you watch the videos you should pause at certain parts, and look up key words you don't understand. Or as soon as you see something confusing, again, pause and research/code until you solve the problem before moving forward.

You say you understand the videos, but that can't be the case or else you'd be able to do the code challenge - so what is happening here is you are actually improperly understanding the material, which is giving you problems. What I mean by improperly understanding is that you can understand something, and you can THINK you understand something, but actually have the wrong idea for it. Applying a concept that you THINK you understand, but actually have wrong, will obviously give you errors in your code and you'll be killing yourself trying to find out whats going wrong, even though you didn't necessarily do anything wrong in your code syntax - you probably just misunderstood something therefore improperly implemented the code.

I don't know if what I am saying makes any sense, but if you DO understand what I said and apply any of it, your life will be much easier in terms of coding.

Don't belittle my experience on Treehouse, outside of this wonderful service I am actually a Computer Science major, and have dealt with C++/Java fairly heavily, so I believe my practices can be of assistance to you.

Yeah, clearly I'm not getting something but I didn't say I understand it, I said that the videos seem to make sense to me until I get out of them. That's part of why I'm not really able to ask a better question at this point- I actually do not know where I'm getting lost. If I could just say "well, I don't really get how x, y and z work together, that's where it starts to break down for me, can someone explain it to me a little differently" or...whatever it was, that would be great.

The only solution I can really think of (because of the lack of specificity in your question - which isn't your fault) is going to another resource to view a tutorial for the specific topic you're on. Maybe someone else can explain it to you better. Sometimes that helps.

Since you don't have a specific question, it's really hard for anyone to give you a specific answer. I tried my best. I'm sure there are much more experienced and intelligent people than I on this forums so I'm sure someone will be of help shortly.

If not, try to learn from a different source (just for the topic you're having problems with.)

Another useful tip: when you are watching a tutorial, after the instructor does some bit of code and prepares to test it out in the browser, pause the video and guess what the outcome will be before the instructor tests it. If you can manage to get this right, you understand whats going on. If you don't get it right even though you THINK you understood what he wrote, then you are probably surviving off of memorization - which is not good for you in the long run. That's just my two cents and what has worked for me, but everyone is different.