Obviously installing gentoo isn't going to make you a linux guru over night, but if you pay attention to everything that is going on you do end up learning a lot more about what is actually on your system than if you do a graphical live cd install with some other distro.
Its been awhile, my gentoo system has been running pretty smoothly for about 2 years so i haven't needed to do a fresh install, but if i remember correctly the documention did a pretty good job of explaining every command that it had you type in during the install. If you're new to linux, you end up with a sense of accomplishment after a successful install and you're familiar with the basic tools that'll get you started on your path to enlightenment.