Not dumb at all, Jared. You've run into a leftover "feature" from the original CM. CM was a software product (still available I believe) that Erik purchased and modernized. Basically he cleaned up the interface and started adding new courses. Unfortunately some of the original courses weren't upgraded and contain obscure/inaccurate references such as you have encountered. BTW you don't have to deal with that whole adaptive/sequential nonsense if you don't want to. Just choose "view courses" and pick something tasty. You can also choose to view the lessons of each course to decide if it's for you. I'd recommend the newer courses if you're just starting. They give better explanations than most of the originals. Hope that helped and have fun!
Forgive me if this sounds dumb...
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Ok so I just purchased a membership here because I've read many good things about the chess mentor. However, when I am going through lessons, in the explanation box to the right of the board it mentions things like "this move leads to so and so of a position as seen in variation 1" or "this move leads to this position as seen in variation 5" and things to that nature. Where do I find these variations? Sorry if this seems like a stupid question, I'm relatively new to the site.