In her second semester teaching for Arizona State University, the author suddenly found herself teaching a fully online writing course for the first time. Originally she had been scheduled to teach the course in a hybrid format, meeting face to face with students once a week; however, a coding error in the online class schedule resulted in the necessity of making the course fully online to accommodate students "attending" from multiple campuses. This sudden thrust into the world of online education precluded her receiving much of the excellent training offered by the university and permitted her to commence the experience with many misconceptions and assumptions still firmly in place. Underprepared and unenlightened though she was, the combination of colleague encouragement, technological support, and student feedback contributed to a rapid refinement and, where necessary, restructuring of her approach to meet the needs of her students. The result was valuable lessons in e-learning in terms of course design and educational practice. In this article, the author offers her learning experience in hopes of assisting other new online instructors in breaking through similar misconceptions. The lessons she learned in the virtual classroom encompassed an awareness of technological proficiency, a refinement of effective communication, and an understanding of the true time commitment. (Contains 4 notes.)