Give me some tips to succeed with my online classes!!

[rizzy]

Hey guys,
I enrolled for online classes a while ago and I’m trying so hard to stay on top of the game. I’m finding it hard to stay motivated and concentrate on my lessons. Please help me with some tips to succeed and perform well before I give up! I know I can score good marks in exams but there’s so much distraction from other things. Thanks in advance.

[mishale]

Hi,
I understand how hard it can be to study all by yourself when there are other fun things to do. Perhaps this site might give you good tips on how to make it through online education. Visit this link http://www.distance-learning-college-guide.com/online-distance-education.html . Good luck in your education.

[eugenetyson]

Learning the software and how to design could be hard to do on your own. Especially if you are following the tutorials and not getting the desired results.

I found the best way to learn was by doing. Originally when I first started learning the software, especially illustrator, I found myself in a class, with an instructor. We spent the whole day doing a tutorial. And I was getting megabored with it. So while she was harping on about something. I started a new file and recreated exactly what we'd done that day in about 5 minutes, we spent 7 hours doing this tutorial, and I was thinking why?

Well what learned in those 7 hours obviously stood to me, as I was able to recreate it in 10 minutes, whereas before i started the tutorial I wouldn't have been able to do it on my own. Something has to be said for it.

I think the best way to stay motivated is to keep doing the tutorial until you can repeat it without looking at the notes.

Then the reward is getting the latest flyer from your mail and finding something on that flyer, brochure, magazine, newspaper, that was covered in the tutorial. Sit down and try to recreate it.

When I first started recreating designs, I scanned the page in, set it at a low opacity and replaced it with my own over it.

Any images, logos etc. I tried to recreate them with the software I had.

Once I had successfully (the the best of my ability) recreated it, I took the whole thing apart and reassembled it on my own, without any scan.


I spent about a year doing nixers of birthday invites, posters for pubs, sponsorship cards, etc.

You just have to spend time putting your lessons to practical use, when you're designs are good enough, you will get paid for your troubles, that is the best motivation of all :)

You won't get rich from it.

You should try to get yourself into some sort of class scenario. You'll benefit from it.

[The Repro Kid]

Actually eugenetyson, I think that was the classic, ask a fake question and then post a fake answer, pay for click, spam scam.

[ldrain]

Actually eugenetyson, I think that was the classic, ask a fake question and then post a fake answer, pay for click, spam scam.

and that's why you're our moderator! :D

nice catch

[The Repro Kid]

Ha ha. eugentyson posted such a nice answer now there is no reason to get rid of the thread.

I tried to take an online course once, given by one of the local adult education offerings. I think it was on how to start a small business. the course seemed sort of canned. The teacher would pose questions on the assigned reading material and try to start a discussion, but the teacher's responses seemed sort of automated. Like a real person was not writing the response but instead some complicated artificial intelligence algorithm was responding based on what the students wrote.

[The Repro Kid]

Hey, I just discovered one of the new tools given to us Mods with this overhaul is an IP address checker. It seems my suspicion was not unfounded. rizzy and mishale have the exact same IP address. What a surprise! :D

[GuyB]

Nice catch Kitty Kid !

A good illustration of the lesson 2 :D

[kialua]

Yay repro go! Actually I had the same thought as I read the two posts in a row and was just wondering about those ips addresses. But that was a great reply from Eugene.

[The Repro Kid]

cool spam kitties GuyB.

Yeah those IP checkers are way cool kialua, and should be very helpful. I'm pretty sure we didn't have them before.

[eugenetyson]

If this was an online test, what score would I have gotten? I think my answer was full and to the point. :)

[The Repro Kid]

I just want to know what a "nixer" is. :)

[eugenetyson]

oh right, my Dublin language popping out there, just a term for a job on the side, a quick job that you do and expect little or no money for.

If you can do a nixer for your mate then fair play to you,


as we'd say in Ireland.


A nixer really is any type of odd job, like fixing shelves, building sheds, etc.

[The Repro Kid]

cool. thanks. like an odd job?

[eugenetyson]

An odd job would be an accurate description.

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=nixer

[The Repro Kid]

Are you in the UK? Is that a UK term?

[eugenetyson]

Nope, I'm in Ireland. I'm not sure of the origins of the term, but it's used in Ireland all the time. I'm not sure if it's used in the UK.

[The Repro Kid]

I found this:

It is difficult to trace the etymology of slang. Often, by the time a word is sufficiently well-recognized to merit investigation, its true origins have been lost to living memory and become layered with folk etymologies which prove impossible to dislodge. In these cases (and this appears to be such a case), we can do little more than make some informed speculations.

A "nickser" or "nixer" is usually described as an odd job or, more specifically, an irregular job such that no taxes are paid on the wages for it. This leads us to several possible, and potentially confluent, etymologies based on known values for the words "nick" and "nix". "Nick" has a wide variety of meanings based on cheating, snatching, and stealing. It could be that tax-free work was viewed as akin to stealing or cheating, thus you "nick" your tax from the government. "In the nick" is a turn-of-the-century phrase meaning "in prison", probably derived from "nick" in the sense of "caught" or "arrested". It is conceivable that "nickser" might have originally referred to a job of the sort that would land you in prison, say, trafficking in contraband. "Nicker" is also an early 20th century slang term for "pound sterling". Thus, an odd job that earned perhaps not much money might be thought of as a "pound job" or a "nickser".

Another potential origin is the word "nix", derived from the German "nichts", meaning essentially "none" or "nothing". Bearing in mind the tax-evading nature of the employment, perhaps the original "nixers" were secretive jobs that could not be named in public and were thus referred to simply as "nix". In a similar vein "nix" is also a word of warning that someone of authority is approaching and thus might be used in the conduct of some illegal business. Finally, "nix" might simply be referring to one paying no, or "nix", tax on the wages.

I you wish to pursue this further, Professor Terence Patrick Dolan of NUI Dublin is the author of a Hiberno-English Dictionary and he has an email address for submissions. Perhaps he knows more about the word, or knows someone who does: http://www.ucd.ie/~linguist/hiben g.html.

P.S.

Having written all this, I finally found a published definition in a dictionary of Irish slang called Slanguage, by Bernard Share. He asserts the "nix" meaning "nothing" etymology, but does not indicate if this refers to the lack of tax or to some other quality of the job. He also declines to offer any specific evidence to support this derivation, so I am inclined to view it with some scepticism. It may be that he, like me, simply made an educated guess.

-Chris Frost
For Ask a Linguistics Tutor
3/14/01