Advice on the best way to memorize characters

Hello, everyone:  I am taking Mandarin at a local university, Chinese 102, using the Integrated Chinese textbook.  My instructor noticed that I rely on pinyin too much and am very weak with reading the characters.  (That's funny to me because my previous instructor in Chinese 101 said I did just fine in that class.)  So is there anyway to better remember the characters without being too overwhelmed?  Xie xie.  --abelle