Plugin and Theme Suggestions

Hey everybody. I’m pretty new to wordpress, and I have to make a site as an assignment where each user has their own page and is able to post within that page through the use of a form. Then, these posts would also be displayed in a site wide activity stream.

From what I’ve seen other people building with wordpress, my goals seem a little on the simple side but I still feel like I’m struggling a bit. I’ve spent about two weeks looking for possible themes and plug-ins to use, but I haven’t found any that I’m able to get the settings right for what I’m planning. So, do you guys have any ideas of what themes and plug-ins I should look at for this project? Any suggestions would be a big help, because I’m feeling a little lost.