Every GL account is assigned a Directory on AFS, which contains his/her home directory, web space, and e-mail folders. On all of the UNIX systems here at UMBC it will be located at the following location...
/afs/umbc.edu/users/u/s/username/
Where u is the first letter of your username, s is the second letter of your username, and username is your GL account logon name.
Well for a start the following folders are in every users account at the time of creation
Within the home directory live all of the typical files found in any UNIX environemt (.cshrc, .login, etc...). You may also see .2kprofile and .ntprofile directories. This is where information relevant to your Microsoft Windows NT and 2000 profiles were/are stored. This is also where you are going to want to save your files that you want to have access to from anywhere on the network.
Within the Mail directory you will see files for all of your mailboxes (inbox, sent-mail, etc...). Here is also where certain configuration files can be placed (such as .forward, .procmailrc, etc...) that allow you to manipulate your mail. For example, forwarding you mail to another account or filtering your incoming email.
The pub directory is generally empty by default, I believe. This is where you can put files, so that others can readily copy them from here into their accounts. You can also have a www directory within your pub directory that allows you to post files onto the Internet accessible via http://userpages.umbc.edu/~username/
The backup directory is a copy of your entire account, that is read-only and taken from the night before. This is typically done around midnight. So if you were to accidently delete a file (or screw up a source code file so it no longer compiles) that you had around yesterday you can go into this directory and you will be presented with the home, Mail & pub directories from the day before. You can then simply copy the file from here to wherever you want to restore it to.
As I mentioned your home directory (/afs/umbc.edu/users/u/s/username/home/) is where you should save your files to. Well how to do this varies defending upon the type of machine that you are on...
UNIX / Linux - if you are on an UNIX or Linux PC, then your home directory is available to you under the /afs/umbc.edu/users/u/s/username/home/ directory. Almost all UNIX shells will start you out in this directory by default.
Windows - Your directory (/afs/umbc.edu/users/u/s/username/) is mapped as the network drive "T:" on the windows PCs. Your home directory (/afs/umbc.edu/users/u/s/username/home/) is mapped as the network drive "S:". If you have a www directory in your pub directory (/afs/umbc.edu/users/u/s/username/pub/www/) it is mapped as the network drive "W:".