From
Wikipedia:
a design pattern is a general reusable solution to a commonly occurring problem in software design. A design pattern is not a finished design that can be transformed directly into code.
You'd be better served reading up on Struts and Hibernate Best Practices at this point. After you have some experience, you'll notice that Best Practices tend to follow design patterns (Struts itself is a
Front Controller. Hibernate is commonly used to construct
Data Access Objects) and give you a better starting point for understanding what patterns are and how to recognize/use them.