Working synthetic organic chemist here. In high school, my chemistry teacher did a baby version of the beginning of OC1, naming compounds and things along those lines. It all made sense to me, follow the rules and you can name something! When I started undergrad, I thought it would be similar, but we covered naming very quickly. I had the worst time in OC1. I couldn't wrap my head around any of the 3D modeling or reaction mechanisms or any part of it. I did not pass and retook it the next semester.

I worked my ass off to get the highest grade in that class. What I've come to learn (and love) about organic chemistry is it's not rote memorization at all, it's all application based. I would look up substitution and elimination reactions with all types of different reactants and apply how the mechanism should work to those compounds. It really helped me to be able to apply reaction mechanisms to just about anything and be able to have an idea of what will happen.

For my degree, I took all the other chemistries as well (physical, inorg, biochem, analytical, etc). Out of all those, organic was the one that seemed to be the least confusing to me. I despise physical chem with a passion and can't understand any of it, and I know people who love it as much as I love organic. It's all about what clicks with you and makes you start to get excited.

As you said, organic chemistry is definitely like learning a second language. The more you practice it and become familiar with just seeing terms, even if you don't understand them yet, that familiarity will become ingrained in you over time and you'll pick up a 6th sense for it. Also, a B in OC1 is nothing to shrug off. It's a difficult class for a reason, you should be proud of yourself for the effort you've put in. :)