How do you learn to use camera controls in video games?

Dear Mother,

[whooshing noise of traveling back in time to 2001]

So I've been playing fighting games for a long time, but I just recently made friends with some guys who play a lot of first-person shooters. We've been playing this kinda new game Counter-Strike (it's actually a Half-Life mod) on PC and it's super fun. It's not too hard to pick up the controls, either, because you just use the mouse to move around. My problem, and the reason why I'm writing you, is this other game they are all playing on my one friend's Xbox. I'm positive you've heard of it because it's everywhere. It's called Halo.

We've all been switching off playing (it has this setting called "local co-op" where two people can play at once, but only two). Whenever it's my turn, I just can't figure out the controls fast enough and I am struggling to keep up the whole time. Like ... you use one thumb to move and the other to control the camera/aim? It's not intuitive at all. I feel like I'm constantly looking in the wrong direction and barely getting any kills.

Am I ever going to get better at this? And also do I need to ditch these guys and get a completely new friend group that doesn't make sexist jokes all the fucking time? That was off-topic, sorry...

Sincerely,
Joystick in the mud

P.S. I'm not a "feminist" (what can I say, I don't hate men, ok?) but I do still like the idea of your website. It's so hard to find other girl gamers!!! You can't play as a girl in Halo either. Like, it's set in the future, but all the soldiers are still guys??

Dear Joystick in the mud,

I know you. Not just because you sound remarkably like a younger version of my business partner Maddy Myers. It's because I've been asked some version of this question countless times, often when I'm talking to femmes who don't self-identify as gamers.

But I'm from the future, which means I know that you will get better at this. As for why this question comes up so often, I don't know if it's because of impatient boys like your friends (ditch them, by the way) putting undue time-stress on the process of learning to both move your character with the left joystick and look around with the right one, or if it's that lots of men have simply been exposed to video games that use these controls for longer than the women in their lives. Maybe it's because a lot of us cut our gaming teeth on fixed-angle games like The Sims instead of first-person shooters like Halo.