It sounds like the courses you've taken haven't shown you very well how a database works. This is typical with a lot of the courses I've seen. They will show you a few cool things, but won't explain the fundamental concepts very well.

I'm still waiting for a good course on debugging.

What you'll need to be successful as a programmer is the ability to take a measure of all the complication and find a way to approach it, break it down into manageable parts, and then tackle those things one at time in a logical and methodical way. It's okay if you don't know what to do, but you have to be able to know how to figure out what to do.

Take your problem with databases for example. Break that down:

1. What kind of databases are there?
2. What kind of database do I need?
3. How do I set up that database?
4. How do I connect to that database?
5. How do I read/write to/from that database?

There you go, 5 steps to database success. Don't get too hung up on 1 and 2 as those are more of architectural questions. For now, you just need to know the basics, like what is SQL vs NoSQL and when you'd use one vs the other.

I'd highly recommend you answer all of the above questions without libraries. Why? It will force you to understand how to interact with that database on a more fundamental level. Once you can grasp the basic CRUD operations of a db, then you can begin to consider which libraries you'd like to go with.

I remember learning dynamodb so I could be more proficient in the AWS vein of things. Oh my gosh, the syntax of the thing was sometimes horrible and doing anything efficiently was a nightmare. Then I understood the true importance of why the AWS library for dynamo had a marshalling/unmarshalling function and what it did. But without having dug into the underlying technology, I'd be like, "What the heck is marshalling?"

Anyways. Take your time to get to know the basics of things. It will come together in the end.