External hard drives in linux

[M.R.P. zensky]

In Ubuntu Mate I type fdisk -l  and the external drive shows up as /dev/sdc  I understand that I create a mount point such as mount /dev/sdc1 /media/usb-drive. My question is that to use the external drive do I have to go to the directory of my  Mount point? To access the external hard drive? Will the external drive be visible on my desktop? Or in order to have the external drive be visible on my desktop do I need to set my mount point to the desktop.

What is a suggested directory to mount an external drive?