Just more information on how to actually use things. Also, does it have to be so slow?

The first part of your question refers to wanting more information on how to use things. Is there anything in particular you're trying to do? It might help me to have a starting place.

Depending on the version of Sitecore you have, the number of child items you have under each node of the content tree, and many config factors, Sitecore can become quite slow. There are optimizations you can perform to tune it, though. Also, when Sitecore first loads after an app pool refresh (deployment, rebuild etc), there is a lot of caching that happens, and that can take quite a bit of time. Fortunately, subsequent reloads are much faster.