Thanks  Pmalek

I have been doing more research and I sure appreciate your detailed and clear response.

I think what happened with the words I had to rearrange was in the setup of coinbase wallet. I was given a list of words which I wrote down then later I was taken to a screen where the words were written in a grid pattern and I was instructed to click and drag them into a list in the correct order.

I have not used the coinbase wallet. It seems to me insecure to have a wallet online if the seed phrase is given to me by coinbase.

Or maybe (actually what it seemed at the time) it was just a complex way of logging in, maybe other coinbase users can verify this.

I study a couple hours a day, and a lot of things I have a better understanding of.

I have a ledger wallet and frequently see advise to not keep BTC on exchanges but since I am uncertain how to use it correctly I have BTC on 4 exchanges to hopefully at least not have it all in one place.

Pmalek your answers have been awesome! By being very clear and concise. So much of what I read here and everywhere is just very confusing to beginner.

I did figure out to send BTC from coinbase to Kucoin so can I use only that Kucoin address in my ledger? Can I send all of my BTC to that address then after putting it in my ledger? Or do I need to get a sending address from each of the exchanges? I mean like sending BTC to each address after putting all four addresses in my wallet.

Conflicting info I get on private keys (is same as private address??) I have read the private keys go to the BTC or do they go to the wallet?
        I see all the time
"if you don't have the keys you don't own the bitcoin"
                      Then I saw coinbase won't give me my private keys, hence my confusion about the 12 words they gave me!! I thought maybe those were my priv keys but I just don't know. Why give the phrase and then tell me I can't get the keys? Now I'm leaning more to thinking the words is just lengthy password.

I will have to keep researching I guess. I don't understand how to put the BTC from the 4 exchangesin to my ledger if they don't give me the private keys.

I just realized I have seriously deviated from the title "unpopular opinions" Please someone let me know if I shouldn't be just replying here and should ask somewhere else.

Thanks!