University work is typically a bit different to work at high school, and this web page tries to help you get used to the differences.
The first main difference you will notice is that you are left much more to yourself to organise your time. The rule is that 10 credits should correspond to about 100 hours work total. So by Christmas you should have spent about 100 hours on this module. That includes everything, including lectures and all the background reading you must do. It's up to you to organise your schedule around the timetable to make sure you can put in all the hours you need. (And similarly, to make sure you do not spend too much time and put yourself under stress that way.)
The second main difference is that university work is much more about ideas and reasons rather than facts. Your job is not really to memorise facts (though a small amount of factual recall will be needed). It is rather to understand the reasoning process so that you can find out new facts for yourself on your own. The lecturer's job is not to "fill you up" with facts but to facilitate you to understand the reasoning and problem solving approaches you will need.
So when you write an essay, the way you might usefully think about it is a table with two columns,
Assertion 1 Reason for believing assertion 1 Assertion 2 Reason for believing assertion 2 Assertion 3 Reason for believing assertion 3 Assertion 4 Reason for believing assertion 4
Setting out your essay like this would not be very elegant, but you don't get marks for elegance, but for reasoning. Try to get into the habit of justifying every assertion you make in all university work you do.
To write an essay you must collect information together. Specifically you will need to collect together ideas, facts, reasons, and also the reference to the book or page or web address where you found this information. You may also like to draw "mind maps" or similar (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_map) to help you sort out how the various elements fit together. Spending time preparing in this way will save you lots of time later on.
It is also often sensible to start off working on two or more essay titles simultaneously so you can decide later on which you like best, rather than committing to one essay title early on. Similarly it is often good to collect more information than you need initially, and then reduce it to only the most relevant parts at the final editing stage for your essay.
As you are collecting information, reading books or web pages, or attending lectures, etc., you should obviously take notes of anything you find that is important. I say "obviously" but many students do not do this. Always read a book or a web page with a notebook to hand so you can make notes on what you might need or use later.
You'll have to decide the importance of what you are reading and therefore how many notes you need to take for yourself. Sometimes it is sufficient just to make a note to yourself that says, "Smith discusses topic X in reference Y", so you can look it up again should you decide later that it is important. But if you are sure it's going to be important you might want to make more detailed notes straight away.
The importance of taking notes is twofold:
Don't forget the second point! I often find it useful to take notes in a lecture even though I know I will throw the notes away almost as soon as the lecture is over.
Of course too many notes can be a problem too. It's much more rare for a student to have too many notes, but if you think this applies to you then do throw some notes away, and take less in the next lecture. In most cases however, beginning students are much more likely to not take enough notes.
If you are struggling to remember things, play mental games with yourself. Make up acronyms or mnemonics, or associate facts with unrelated events or objects that you might find helpful or funny, including its shape or colour or where you were or what you were doing when you first learnt about it. Use anything that helps, however crazy or stupid it might seem.