As far as what kind to get, just go with one that you like. One that you think is pretty in your eyes (sorry don't mean to sound sappy, but you should at least like the looks of the corn you get) anyway, I think a lot of people get amels, snows, or normals as their first corns, mainly because they are usually very easy to find. It would be better to get a corn from a breeder though. That way you know who its parents are, you know whether its a boy or girl, and also the breeder can tell you if it eats good or not and stuff that you should know, stuff that a petstore usually can't tell you, like with my first corn, I got her from a petstore and i didn't know how old she was or whether she was a girl or boy. Heck, the petstore didn't tell me anything about her. If you live in or near Chicago, you should be able to find a breeder locally. Your set up doesn't have to be fancy or cost a lot of money. You can get a 10 gallon tank at Wal-Mart for $10 and then you can make hides out of butter tubs turned upside down and toilet paper rolls, and you can use a shallow bowl for a water dish, I'm sure mom wouldn't mind. A lot of people spend a lot of money on fancy hides and then their snake never uses them and you end up feeling kind of dumb. Here is a link you should read.
http://www.cornsnakes.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=46
It'll tell you a lot more than I can put in this post, and besides, people are going to :flames: me for not telling you to use the search function, which btw, is a very useful tool. Hope I helped out. :wavey: