Hiya sullmore!

For starters I can say that one can model stuff in several ways.

Sometimes by creating surfaces via curves, or by manipulating existing objects/surfaces. There are a number of primitives in maya that is quite handy for modeling, you create say a polygon cube, and then you tweak the vertices/points to desired positions.

The nurbs cube is annoying I think but handy sometimes.

There is so much to say that I hope you simply state your questions whenever you feel like it.