Yeah, that's familiar. I chose for myself a project in which the data structure was a tree that should be generated randomly, but under some constraints. Also I tried to write it using functional paradigms, using many closures. I hit so many walls doing that that when it sort of worked, finally, I never wanted to touch Rust again.
Hah, yes. I thought I'd get started with Rust going through building some basic data structures. Linked lists were near the top of my list so I didn't get very far with that first approach XD
You can skip her explanation of why the Linked List is a bad first data structure, and get straight to doing, but if you have no idea why a very experienced programmer would think this data structure is terrible (so terrible she tried but failed to have it removed from Rust's Standard Library before Rust 1.0) you should read her whole PSA too.
I didn't end my Rust learning with that. I did a bit of a deep dive into articles about linked lists in Rust out of curiosity before pivoting to more fruitful projects. My favourite "project" being last year's Advent of Code.
I've never written linked lists the same way in other languages since.
Rust made me better in languages that aren't Rust.