I can't for the life of me figure out how the leveling works, any help would be great.

so let me get this right you must improve any combination of your 7 major skills by a total of 10 points? then you sleep/rest/meditate on what you've learned? when you raise a level you are given the opportunity to increase 3 of your 8 attributes by 1-5 points? how do you make shure that you get 5 points for each attribute? when you raise minor skills you are just raising that skill not your level right? how can i get all skills and attributes fully leveled/maxed out? are there certain skills i should make major or do i just pick the ones i want? how do i make shure that i don't over or under level? yes i have already used the UESP and it's just to much for me to understand. so i need someone to explain it in a way that makes sense to me. does it matter what race i use or should i just pick the one that i like? sorry i ask so many questions? i guess i'm just used to playing Skyrim. it seems much easier to play than Oblivion.

Stop trying to power level and gain the most for each level up. In fact, you don't want to level up too quickly in this game. You can beat the game at Level 1 if you so desire.

If you level your character faster than you level your combat/defense/recovery skills, then you will find yourself on the losing end of things. Also, once you are at level 25 to 30, you have unlocked all content other than a few enemies (very few) that show up at higher levels. So, there is no need to chase a max level, or be in hurry to get there.

True, it's your major skills that contribute to the character level, the other skills contribute to your attributes.

What is probably best is to have one main combat, one main defense skill as a major, then make sure that all other skills you will use all the time are set as Minors or Misc. I have this mix on my current character and things are working out just fine. I put skills like Mercantile (which levels really slow) and Speechcraft (which I never use in this game) as Majors. I also picked Blunt and Destruction (two skills I won't use on this build) to further slow things down.

Finally, I use the Natural Leveling mod which does all the leveling behind the scenes, so I don't even have to worry about it.

but i've never really put very much time into playing this game. i've only played a few hours and i was just trying to figure out how it works. by the way i'm on xbox 360 so no mods for me.