FLVS Lifeline

“Hmm… I don’t recall that part”

“Ohh, alright. I thought that was the answer but I wasn’t sure.”

“*Rambles about a topic*”

I have come to notice that FLVS classes cannot help but establish a pattern. Every class has its pattern, but FLVS’s class patterns are completely consistent and totally predictable.

Learn your FLVS assignment pattern and you will own the class. Every class I have taken seems to share some common traits, so I will go over those as well as how to dominate the assignment pattern. 

if you are considering online classes, doing online classes or just curious, this is the post for you. 

as most of you know, I’m taking Latin and PE online over the summer to gain some extra credits early. I fell behind for a little while, but I’m back on top. 

Issues You May Run Into

It’s easy to lose your motivation, but that shouldn’t discourage you from taking online classes. I began Latin at the beginning of summer and I finished like 25% of it in a week. My work slowed but it continued until I got to 59% and it kind of just sat there. Online classes are incredibly different from traditional classes because you don’t have a teacher breathing down your neck to make sure you work. It’s up to you to stay motivated

The Solution

Keep logging into the website. I really noticed I had lost motivation when I logged into my laptop and realized it had been a week since I had done class work. I didn’t just drop everything and finish the class but I made it a point to just start getting on the website everyday. I don’t even do assignments everyday, but I have to log in. It’s okay to just take 25 minutes and read a lesson or two. As long as you are on the website, practicing.

It can be really easy to fall behind on your work. Sometimes you lose your motivation but can’t independently fix it. That’s okay! But when you don’t fix it fast enough, before you know it, you are modules behind and it’s almost August. No matter how far behind you are, giving up the class is never the answer. Dropping the class will put a 0 in the book and even the most extreme case of falling behind and realizing it too late will still be better than zero. That kind of made no sense. I’ll explain further in the solution.

The Solution

Do not give up. Once you hit the point of no return, dropping the class is not an option.  No matter how far behind you are and how little time you have left, any score you get will be better than the score you would get if you just quit. If you only have a few weeks left in the class and you are really far behind, work as hard as you can those few weeks. Only getting to 80% done is still much better than giving up at 47%. 

Ask someone to remind you to do your work everyday. Studyblrs offer a wide variety of ages, but almost everyone is living with somebody. Whether it is your mom, dad, boyfriend, girlfriend, brother, sister or room mate, ask them to remind you to get on your class. If you know you have 0 willpower have them make you give them your phone for an hour.

You get distracted while you study/ work. I ran into this problem a lot when I first began. I would open up a tumblr tab while opening FLVS. This was for those “five minute breaks” that I had via the pomodoro method. Those five minutes quickly turned into at least 15 minutes. 

The Solution

Just because you are on a device to do your work, does not mean you can’t limit your access to distractions. A free chrome extension, Forest, is perfect for this. It’s purpose is to discourage surfing the web while you work. You click the timer for 25 minutes, for example, and it will grow a little tree and after 25 minutes the tree is grown. But if you go on a website you shouldn’t the tree dies. This is strangely motivating to do your work :)

Turn your wifi off of your computer. If you are working on a word document to upload to your class, the internet will be unnecessary. If you have all of your resources on paper.

It can feel like you aren’t really learning from your class. I had this issue a lot torward the beginning. When you have all of your online resources right infront of you, it can be tempting to not even read them. I would just switch from my worksheet to my Latin dictionary and then not understand why I knew basically nothing about Latin. Though there aren’t any issues with this on my GPA, it still really upset me.

The Solution

Read everything. Even if you know you can refer back to the lesson during the work and tests, you should still read all of the information. It will be impossible to learn anything if you only read what you absolutely have to.

Write your notes on paper.  I did all of my notes on OneNote in the beginning, which is great! If it works for you. I have trouble retaining information from notes on a screen. I started doing notes by hand and I felt like I learned sooo much more.

You get anxious during DBA’s. A DBA is a “discussion based analysis” and I don’t know about anyone else, but talking to the teacher I’ve never met before on the phone while they give me a test is dreadful. Nothing necessarily bad really happens, but between not being able to really understand them and the stress to perform, is nothing short of anxiety causing.

The Solution

Realize that your teacher wants you to do well.  Your teacher isn’t trying to stress you out or cause you to mess up, they just want to make sure you are doing well. They want to see your progress beyond numbers on a computer screen and that’s understandable.

Take a breath. If you are getting overwhelmed ask your teacher for a moment. As previously mentioned, they do not want you to have an anxiety attack because they stress you out. Take a moment to think over the question and return.