You've got lots to learn... but plenty of people to help here.
Star maps are hard to understand until someone kind of shows you what it means, and they are hard to use because you have to factor in the time of year to get the orientation right.
To visualise where things are, I would strongly suggest you go and get Stellarium.
http://www.stellarium.org/ It's free!
I wish I had a program when I started out, as simple to use to visualise the sky as I would see it from where I live. You just plug in your co-ordinates (or click on the world map), and you can see what they sky looks like at any time. It's great to orient yourself.
Once you get more in to it, there are more advanced programs with more details. Depending on the scope you have (if it is a "GOTO" scope), this will help you find objects much more easily. From the sound of it though, it's probably not motorised, otherwise you would have been asking what the control pad on the scope was for!
Turbo