Things to Learn in Emacs

For my good (and yours), here's a list of things that I think I should know how to do in emacs, but somehow don't:

• Use the version control package so that I'm not constantly popping between bash (terminal) and emacs to talk to git, and I don't think that's necessary.
• Batch renaming with Dired. It should work, it should be simple, I've just not gotten there.
• File specific org-mode settings, for properties, tags, and TODO keywords. I understand that it's possible, but my brain/system doesn't have room for that yet.