A pointer holds the memory region of a variable or other value. A pointer can be used to reference said value by going to the memory region it is being pointed to and reading the value stored there.
one way to think about it is if memory regions were pages in a book. if I want to access the information on say, page 123, I would create a pointer to that page. Thereafter I can access the text stored on that page by pointing to it’s page number
I am kind of learning as io go here, I guess that is kind of the point of doing a course, though 
Anyway, If anyone feels they can improve or expand on my explanation then feel free, don’t be shy