Wait I'm so confused about what your'e telling me to do...
As an example:
1) My CSS rule is for ```.annotator-editor a, .annotator-filter .annotator-filter-property label```. If I take the !important out of this rule and all rules on this CSS file then the rules from courses.css  overwrite it.
2) The classes in courses.css all have rules like "a:link, a:visited" which are LESS specific than mine.
3) Because they are more broad they overwrite my more specific rules
4) According to that article it tells me only to use !important when I'm being specific in my attributes and once again, my rules are more specific than those on courses.css. 
5) I didn't write courses.css and those seem to involve higher and broader standards should I not provide my specific changes. Am I just being dumb and putting my css in the wrong place where it will only get loaded before and not after?