I am obviously new this design thing in general but all I want to do is to make an outline around the text. How do I do that?

Depends on what exactly you mean. If you want to have the exact same text shape with a solid stroke and empty fill you just go to fill and stroke dialogue and select remove fill and whatever color and weight you like for the stroke. If you want to have your solid text but with another outline around that shape you do Path>dynamic offset and drag the slider to create the level of outline you like.

I want have the solid text with an outline around it.
Im still not understanding though. I pressed the text button and wrote out my text "THE NATION"
I then went to path-dynamic offset
What do I drag? I tried dragging around the text but nothing? what do I do exactly?
I apologize. I am extremely new to this. Trying to learn though. Thanks.

try looking at some of these:
http://inkscapetutorials.wordpress.com/ ... t-effects/

when you use dynamic offset, use the tool to select it. you should see the object now has one node, simply drag this to increase the size of outline. (you may want to dulplicate or clone the text first, so the outline + text can have different colours.)