Samba through SSH tunnel.
 

For starters, I can hardly find any good help on the web. I'm trying to use the SMB client to access a windows machine and such from Linux, and I really have no idea about how to go about this. Can anyone give me some advice?

SMB/CIFS often involves multiple ports, so SSH isn't a convenient solution. Ideally, you should use a full VPN solution like OpenVPN. (OK, ideally you wouldn't use CIFS at all, but VPN solves the problem).

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I wish I could use that. My Professor told us to use SMB through a SSH tunnel, So I'm stuck with SSH, much to my displeasure.

I beleive that modern SMB can run through just TCP port 445, so you might be able to get away with making an SSH tunnel for that port, but I've never tried it myself. As always, use the smbclient command-line utility to test your setup before you use the built-in desktop support. For some reason, graphical interfaces for SMB can be finicky, but smbclient is solid.

I'll give it a try and get back to you on that.