Lost in Photoshop

Hated to miss last week's class on Photoshop! I know I'm unbelievably behind now. If anyone feels led to offer some help, I'd be most grateful. I did poke around online a little to see if I could find out about using patterns. I did find one pretty cool site, but unfortunately the guy just goes too fast for me, and he assumes that the viewer already has a pretty good handle on Photoshop.