Video CoPilot Failure

So I went through the tutorial for the text that explodes. I followed the directions very strictly, and walked through each of the steps along side the tutorial. It was hard to complete the tutorial because I wasn't able to preview any of my work and make adjustments. In fact I never previewed it. I just got sick of waiting for it to load and just decided to render and see what i got. I walked through all the steps closely and I didn't end up with what I'm supposed to have. I couldnt figure out what was wrong because I couldn't preview. Perhaps I can get advice for this type of thing in class because I'm really frustrated at the fact that I can never seem to complete my assignments without something going completely wrong. I just want to be able to work easily without problems so badly.