Is a total derivative the same thing as a directional derivative? Total derivatives are calculated very similar to directional derivatives and I was wondering are they one and the same? 
If not, what is the difference between them?

The total derivative you can think of as the collection of all the directional derivatives.
If $F : \mathbb{R}^n \to \mathbb{R}^m$, and $D_a F : \mathbb{R}^n \to \mathbb{R}^m$ is its total derivative at point $a \in \mathbb{R}^n$ then $D_a F v$ is the directional derivative in the direction $v$.
So the total derivative, $D_a F$ is a machine that takes a direction, and gives you the corresponding directional derivative of $F$ at point $a$.
Sometimes it is convenient to take the direction to be a normal vector, but you could plug in vectors of any length.
The total derivative can be computed using the partial derivatives via the Jacobian.
