From another thread, someone suggested I needed glasses. Turns out all I needed was a better font!!

I switched to Arial (for my personal vocab notes), and it was much easier to read Russian, esp. for a beginner. The serifs were what was confusing me.

To make it even easier, I went into Format... Font... Character Spacing... and expanded the spacing a little bit.

Maybe this'll help some others in the same boat as me. Good luck!