When you say "terminal" if you mean to imply your display, vs. the character mode command line prompt, then you should look System Preferences, the Displays panel. System Preferences should be in your Dock (the long strip usually along the bottom of the screen). It looks like a white box with an Apple logo and light switch. You can control resolution, frequency, color management etc. from this panel.
By the way, if you are looking for another way to see currently running programs, I would heartily endorse a shareware program called iClock. The program mainly concerns itself with putting day and date into the menu bar, but among its many options is to also put a drop down list of currently active programs into the menu bar. For whatever reason, I find this more convenient than scanning the dock for the little black triangles that indicate the program is running. I seem to recall from my brief time about 10 years ago using Macs at work, that this is how the older Mac OS used to do it - a list as part of the Apple menu itself. I may be wrong, it was a long time ago, but perhaps thats why it still feels comfortable to me.
Anyway, I am not associated with the iClock vendor at all - just a very happy customer.
