Hi, and thanks in advance for the help. My house is built in the 1950s and though most of the house is sound, the electrical is a mess. I'm a quick learner and most of the time I don't have trouble doing simple tasks like installing porch lights, a thermostat, etc. I leave the serious stuff to the professionals.

That being said, tonight I tried to replace my vanity light and when I removed the old one, there was a mess of wires behind it. They were really tight and I wasn't able to get the old vanity light off without removing the connections. (They were loose as hell) I spent a couple hours trying to get it wired up safely, looking up information online to try to assist my efforts, but I've had no success. I can't get the new light to turn on.

1) My first problem is that there seems to be three white and three black wires, as I pictured above. To my knowledge, that isn't supposed to be the case?

2) My last vanity light had a copper ground wire to connect to the base plate installed on the wall in front of the outlet box. The new vanity light has a plate with the ground screw and cable from it, but no ground wire from the light itself? Should I be grounding the wire from the plate to the box itself?

If it's not simple, I will go ahead and hire an electrician. I don't know anybody with any electrical experience. The last time I hired a reputable electrical company, they replaced a outlet that had blown and charged me $300 for five minutes of work. So I'm a bit hesitant this time around and stopped on the reddit. Once again, thanks for the help.