The first computer I ever upgraded on my own was a P3 system (my family owned a few, we just never upgraded them without taking them to a shop). I knew if I broke something/did something wrong my parents would never forgive me, so before I tried upgrading the RAM I read
all the documentation and a couple A+ books.
The thing they all repeated was how applying force was absolutely the wrong thing, you should never need to force anything into place.
Well, I'm sure you know how this turned out: none of the RAM I installed was seated in its socket properly so in a cold sweat I forced all of them into place. Still feel nervous about installing RAM to this day.