If you're looking for information about the University, the best place to start is the University's Web page, which is the online door to UCInfo, a collection of information sources provided by numerous departments on campus. If you live off campus, phone service comes from Ameritech and whatever long-distance provider you prefer. If you live on campus, service comes from the University through your room and board fees. Those fees cover a phone in every dorm room that you can use to call emergency services and any other phone on campus. If you prefer to use another long-distance provider, you may do so by using a calling card provided by the carrier of your choice.
Some departments provide additional courses, and there are some online materials as well.
The NSIT resource guides are another excellent source for help. Make sure you always have a backup of your data, your papers, and so forth. Your backup can be on floppies, on Zip disks, on central UNIX servers, on a friend's computer, or wherever-provided that it's not on or near your primary computer. If you have backup, getting around a dead computer is easy. If you don't, it's very painful.