The Blue Board

Pick out a couple of songs that you really like that would also qualify as beginner level and you will be able to stick with it.

Not sure what kind of music you are into but people have posted chord versions of most popular songs on the ultimate-guitar.com site mentioned above.

Youtube is also great for visual lessons

Don't listen to him. . . . . . he'll have you playing with the guitar upside-down.

Some tips:

-- practice consistently at first, every day. It's annoying, but have to develop those calluses. I first learned on an acoustic guitar where the strings were pretty far from the neck, so I felt like an electric guitar was easy as pie when I finally played one.

-- become familiar with the scales. As strange as it is, I never did much with them and so never really learned the scales that much, just learned the chords by rote memorization.

If you know the theory of music or another instrument, that would help. But I'd recommend not just memorizing Am7 or the various chords but understand what notes each chord consists of and what you change to get the variation on the base chords.

I taught myself but don't think I did it in the right way at all. So my advice is a TIFWIW, but there's a lot of resources out there. ultimate-guitar.com is a decent one, if only for tabs. Good luck.

What kind of music are you interested in?

This will help because there are different styles of playing that you will kind of get stuck in... you are better off making sure you start practicing on a style that you actually like...

fingerpicking, electric power chord / drop tuning kind of stuff, blues style, etc...

That's cool, great way to learn. What were some of the first songs you played?

Which guitars are you looking at?

I agree with Anquan who said don't buy something expensive to start... BUT, I would say don't buy something completely low end either, because those guitars feel like sh*t and you won't want to keep playing on a clunker.

If you think you are gonna put effort into this, go to the store and play around with stuff in the 250-400 range.... ask the guy which ones have solid tops... play them and see what kind of string action (height of the strings) feels good to you. Check out the stiffness too...

I would advise against going really cheap because a really shi**y guitar can basically push you away from sticking with it.

My starter was some kind of Alvarez acoustic... probably 300 bucks... it's still fun to play now, it has a unique feel.

Thanks for the advice. I haven't even really looked around much yet. This was just an idea I had the other day when I was just looking around at youtube videos, I came across some people covering songs and what not and I thought it would be a fun challenge to take on.

So, I wanted to find out if it was even possible to teach myself. I'm not interested in taking lessons and having set times to meet someone, I just want to be able to pick it up and practice whenever I have some time, as a student that is always changing depending on what papers are due or tests are coming up.

I think practicing guitar could be a little bit of a getaway from the stress of school. It will be really challenging, but I think I would enjoy it.

Practice until your fingers fu**ing hurt every day if you really like it.

George Harrison and Keith Richards used to say you better sleep with your guitar if you don't have a lady in your bed if you really want to get to know it.