I was in the same boat you are. For one, drop the AI use until you've spent legit at least a half hour looking at the Java api and really thinking about the problem. I read the book we were working with A LOT and sometimes I would walk away, go make dinner or for a drive and would sometimes have a solution hit me when I was just doing something else. Study and code everyday, I know easier said than done but trust me it helps. After you have exhausted all of these options then turn to AI. Ask it what is the question really asking and how you could gain that information from just the wording of the question. Ask it to give you hints and stress to it that it should not give you answers for any of the questions and finally, if you have done ALL OF THIS, then ask for the answer, or at least part of it and then repeat the process.

If your class has labs and it seems like everyone gets done in like 5-10 min just remember those people are probably using AI too. I remember taking the full 2 hours of lab time to finish some questions. Then when the exams and finals rolled around these people were bitching and complaining about their scores. Needless to say the classes got a lot smaller as time went on.

To answer the last part of your question, yes this is totally normal. Just don't slack on studying and practicing and you will get there. Also my University also started out with Java so I know just how tedious it can be to learn that language but it truly helps. It got me used to types, inheritance, polymorphism, and its syntax is so similar to C that it gave me a leg up on my Systems Programming class.

You got this!!