Hey, thanks for the @ <3
Everyone already gave amazing advise I can't really add anything of weight to. I am not a professional either, just someone who does this as a hobby.
Like most other people, I had Wacom products for a long time and even the tiny very affordable ones worked amazing and never caused me any grief.
But I never really warmed up to them either. This is not a Wacom problem, I think, it has more to do with me not being amazing at working with drawing tablets. My art style would look entirely different depending on whether I'd draw digitally or traditionally and I kept drawing traditionally because of it.
Through long periods of saving up and very generous family members, I was able to buy an Ipad Pro+Pen with Procreate this year and that, finally, made digital working accessible enough for me. Highly expensive, but it works like a charm and when I'm not using it to draw, it's still a fully functional powerful laptop substitude. It has its own problems (the price tag alone, oooof, and of course no extra plugs because, ugh, Apple) but has improved my art sooo dramatically in just a few months, it's crazy.
If you can afford it, I can recommend it. Helped me a lot, personally.
I think in general, if this is your first time working with drawing tablets, you'll probably stumble over entirely different problems. There are a lot of great options for you to choose from and people have been super helpful and insightful about those!
So I'd say, go for one you can pay for that has good non-sponsored reviews and if possible:
- your best bet is probably to go for a size A5. I heard many people work better with larger ones but I think A5 or something similar is pretty good and won't hurt as much financially.
- get to know your art program a little in advance, if you're not familiar with it already.
- install the tablet driver exactly as instructed. People run into problems with those a lot and sometimes they just... stop working out of no where. This shouldn't happen often but if it does, you can probably find people who have had similar problems online and learn from them. But it probably will happen at some point and it sucks :(
- practise simple doodles with the tablet like straight lines and spirals and little flowers. Art program doesn't matter, even Paint will do. It'll probably feel REALLY wonky at first and takes a lot of time and practise to get used to but it helps with control initially.
Anyhow, I hope you'll have tons of fun with the class <3 Have a great day!