Hi Rebecca,
Congratulations on getting yourself into a pickle, good way to learn. Easy peasy (when you know how, of course)
Let the machine get as far as it can from startup (press Esc while it is wending it way to see how its doing).
Next we are going into a terminal session using a virtual tty.
Press at the same time Ctrl+Alt+F2
Log in as root:
>su
>passwd
#pcc (or drakconf) (note the # at the start means you are root)
Use tab and arrow keys to fix
Then exit and
Ctrl+Alt+F8 to get to x session
Or going back to the tty:
shutdown -h now
or
shutdown -r now
Enjoy