It's 2am and I'm not the only one in my online classroom right now attempting to finish a graphic design assignment that's due in 6 hours.

The time commitment required to earn my graphic design degree online has been a bit of a shock to my 9-5 routine. But after putting in my 8 hours as a customer support rep - I leave that building each day pretty inspired to log on for the latest and greatest from my Art Institute Online course. Obviously I have higher hopes for myself career-wise.

Tonight it's commercial art - a couple of final tweaks to an advertising design campaign for a no-name brand of gum. My idea was to make the packaging design sort of like Orbit mixed with origami... or is it 'oragummy'? (must be really late for jokes like those).

The design turned out really nice and I've been getting some great feedback from my classmates through our online class forum. Each of us has a personal space where we can post our graphic design assignments and get critiques from other students before we actually turn it in for a grade. The communication is actually more helpful this way compared to a traditional classroom where people are typically too shy to comment on someone else's work honestly.

More to come...