Hi Marcia,
Have you taken the time to review our robust Support Documentation?
https://www.labkey.org/Documentation/wiki-page.view?name=default
Many of your questions can be answered in our docs and we even have videos to help you understand how to both use LabKey and understand the functionality:
https://www.labkey.org/Documentation/wiki-page.view?name=videos
For future, please do your best to consult our fantastic docs first before posting to the Community Forums.
Regarding the speed of your queries, this is difficult to say. You should do your best to make sure your queries are optimized as much as possible.
It could also possibly be inadequate hardware that your LabKey instance is sitting on and there are not enough resources to run the queries:
https://www.labkey.org/Documentation/wiki-page.view?name=beforeInstall
The number of rows also matters as well since going back to optimization, the more data you have, the longer it may take to respectively render. If you are running calculations and doing pivots within those queries, that can also take a little longer than your standard SELECT statement.
Regards,
Jon