slightly overwhelmed newbie

However excited I am to be the proud new owner of a motorola droid, I must state that my embroilment in grad school proves to be bad timing for learning such a useful device.

Welcome! First off, you will find that the MotoDroid is very easy to get into. Once you set up a google account, everything tends to fall into place nicely. The overwhelming part is when/if you decide to root your Droid as there are more options here than Linux distros.