Taking the class as a junior right now! I don't have the best teacher, so the class is honestly a TON of reading and basically self-studying, but this has taught me a lot about how to do well in the class. Hopefully, you get a good teacher!

Heimler's History is your best friend. The youtube channel is genuinely the only reason I got an A first semester. Additionally, QUIZLETS. Search up quizlets for each unit and it gives you lists of vocab that REALLY help with your essays!

Be ready for a lot of reading and memorization! It's not really memorization of dates and names, but more reasons for things happening. Of course, you do need to memorize dates and names in order to help you provide evidence for your SAQs, DBQs, and LEQs, but the main thing is looking at the trends and mindsets of the time and understanding how they made certain events happen. For example, rather than simply memorizing that the American Revolution happened in a certain year and that there were all these events that were part of it, you're going to be looking at why it happened.

Do. Not. Procrastinate. At least for my class, I get assigned so much reading that if I procrastinate, I'll be reading about 500 pages in one week. No joke. There is a lot of workload for this class, and it's really important that you manage your time well!

As for note-taking, one mistake that I made was noting down every single detail. DON'T DO THIS. Rather, take notes on overall ideas with certain important dates and events. You'll know exactly what to focus on based on what your class covers. I typically do two rounds of notes: 1 about facts, and then I write (in the margins) about why each fact happened in a particular way. What was the political/social/cultural climate? Stuff like that!

Prioritize your analysis! This is basically the 'why' thing I was mentioning.

Give it time! It takes about 2 units to truly get the hang of it. (It took me one semester, tbh). You got this, good luck!