Hi, Chessonly, why do u reboot linux like that, it wont be affected but it can easily destroy your filesystem and if its ext2, then i wont last long before it starts giving u errors at startup in verbose, i think u should follow the right proceed if u dont know how to shutdown like, then i suggest that u go to console and do the following,
#su
enter root password
# halt
that should do the trick, but if u dont have admin rights, then that means that u need to ask you admin to give u shutdown rights, which is actually supposed to be for all unless its a university or campus machine or even organisation.
Hope that helps