It's a whole new world isn't it. When I first started, also not too long ago, I attempted to create an account with Poloniex but had a lot of trouble with the confirmation process. After several attempts I gave up. Sounds like I didn't miss out on much. Now I do most of my trading through Bittrex without any issues and Yobit for my beloved (I know never fall in love with a coin/stock, but I have :-) )NLC2.
After all that I don't really recommend Poloniex. One exchange I've been looking at, though never tried, is Cryptopia. Only because it's NZ based, so I could link it with my NZ bank account, and I could skip Coinbase.
Nice. It's always good to be able to lessen the amount of transferred required. Yesterday for instance I wanted to put some money in an ICO and had to transfer within Coinjar to btc, transfer to my Jaxx wallet, convert to eth, then send to myetherwallet before purchasing the tokens. All the while losing a little during each transaction. Might be an easier way to do it but that's the method I've stumbled upon. :-)