I also keep seeing the use of my $thing = $q->param('whatever'); but am having trouble searching for it as I do not know what name it goes by...

This is the OO ('Object Oriented') interface to CGI.pm:

use CGI;
my $q = CGI->new;
my $value = $q->param('name');
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Roughly equivalent to:

use CGI;
my $value = CGI::param('name');
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except the OO way rends to be more flexible and earsier to modify (eg, you could write/use a module that inherits from CGI, by modifying only the

use

and

new

statements. There's other reasons, but it's too early.