Did PP do a software update or why am I have so many glitches?

You can probably use your laptop, but it's seriously underpowered to work in Premiere.    A proxy workflow might allow you to work more efficiently.  Do some googling for "Premiere Pro proxy workflow"

Maybe I found it, I found my account, and turned off keep it up to date.  It didn't say anything about software but I'm going to assume thats the same.  As to my issue do I hear you say I have to work outside of my laptop?

with the creative cloud app active,  go to the creative cloud menu just to the left of the apple icon at the top left and choose preferences.  

Got it, but theres still nothing showing that does a software update.  I'm sorry to be so obtuse.  I've clicked a bunch of stuff and it just launches different apps.

Premiere is part of creative cloud and I think you must have it installed for premiere to function properly.  Look in your applications folder and you should find a folder called Adobe Creative Cloud.  You'll find the app inside that folder .  When you installed Premiere, it should have installed Creative Cloud and it should load Creative Cloud automatically when you start up the computer.    Either launch the app, or click on the creative cloud icon in your menu bar to find the options Ann is pointing to.  

I'm not very advanced.  Is Creative Cloud part of PP?  I pulled it up and it looks nothing like this screenshot so I'm still not finding this auto update.

First, 8 gigs is marginal for working in Premiere particularly with 4k material.   What are your source properties and sequence settings?   And unfortunately Apple doesn't allow you to add RAM to most of their current modesl.  You might want to explore a proxy workflow which would allow you to work with lower resolution placeholders.   Not the simplest workflow to get your head around, but once you do, it can help a great deal.   You might do some googling to find some tutorials on this.   Post back with any further questions.  

Hi and thanks for a speedy reply.  This was a bit of a challenge as I’m not very tech-savvy.