Unfortunately there's no Hive preschool, your start depends on who is onboarding you and who you meet when you join. Lovesniper and others are welcoming newbies but in many cases the newbie guides dropped to them go ignored as they don't even bother to reply to these comments. So I guess it depends on the user as if you want to learn, you at least read those guidelines.

Contests and challenges are meant to help newbie find their way, get used to writing and we have quite a few of those.

You're welcome by the way :)