College Essential #5: A Way to Stay Organized

I'm a huge fan of lists. I love making them, I love reading them, and I love living by them. It should be no surprise that I also love schedules. In middle school and high school I used my planners religiously. However, I noticed that my behavior changed a little in college, depending on what my course load was like. I'm going to share the two ways that I stay organized during my freshman year!

1. Actively using a planner

During first semester, I used my planner CONSTANTLY. Every day always had every homework assignment listed. This was exactly what I did in middle school and high school, so it seemed natural to me. I would list my longterm assignments on the day they were due, but everything else was listed under the day it was assigned. Every Thursday, I made my "Weekend To-Do List" on the Friday/Saturday/Sunday spots of my planner. 

My school gave us planners and I used it because then you have all the school's dates (registration, drop deadlines, etc) right in your planner. However, my favorite planner is Moleskine's Weekly Notebook Planner. I suggest the 18 month ones if you're in college, because it starts in July and goes until December of the NEXT year (so if it starts in July 2010 it will end in December 2011). The prices vary, but they're not very expensive. Here's the link to the 18 Month Planners. Consider getting the Planner+Notes one. It has the 7 days of the week on the left, and then a notebook on the right.  I like this because you can make your to do lists or draw your doodles on the right, while keeping your schedule neat and clean on the left! If you don't want the 18 month one, here's a link to the yearly Weekly Notebook planner.

2. Relying more on a monthly calendar/list

Second semester, something changed. While my first semester classes had lots of smaller assignments, my second semester classes had almost no small assignments. Each class was heavy on the reading, with reading being basically my only homework for the whole semester. I had a bunch of papers, but that was it. I haven't ever had a class schedule like this before. I had to adapt the way I organized my homework. I used my planner at first, but realized that it seemed like every class's homework was the same: read. Read book. Read "article. Read "thing I don't remember the name of." Basically, the homework was listed on my syllabus and I found it pointless to rewrite the name of the book/article/thing I didn't remember the name of in my planner. 

So I started relying on a calendar that mapped out a few weeks. I'd list all big assignments on it (essays, midterms, debates, etc) or meetings/events. This was a lot more helpful for me than a zoomed in look at my daily assignments. I could look at a week and tell how busy it would be, and predict how I'd need to schedule the daily reading I had to do. I don't have any of these calendars left, but I do have some of the to-do lists that I used. 

This to do list was my "To Do Until the End of the Semester" to do list. Since I had so few small assignments, I lived by this list for the last few weeks. I had two finals, two papers, a debate, and a 2 page written assignment for Spanish. It's easy to look at that and think, "No big deal!" but I've learned to look at it and think "I don't have a billion things to do, I need to work hard on all of these." I like having the due date next to each item because then you don't have to go back and look at my calendar to see how they all relate to each other. With this to do list, the things that aren't highlighted OR circled were completed first. The highlighted thing was completed after those, and the circled things were the things that were happening at the very end of the semester. Here's a link to what it looked like once I had finished everything except for my Spanish paper: http://i43.tinypic.com/2nop46.jpg

This is a daily to do list. As you can see, my nails were bare and in desperate need of being painted! For some reason, I checked off that I painted them even though I didn't. I can't remember what my thinking was. It's possible that I decided I wouldn't paint them, and therefore I checked it off since it was technically not something I had to do. This is Kate Spade stationary and I'm obsessed. It's so much more fun to make a list on something cute instead of a boring piece of lined paper. I liked to make these outside of my planner because then I could just keep it at my desk and recycle it (very responsible of me) once I finished everything on it!

Previous College Essentials: #1 - Longchamps, #2 - ID Holder, #3 -  A Good Packing List, #4 - Random Things You Might Forget

If you have any college questions you'd like answered, email me (merincashmere@gmail.com) with them and if I have enough to say, I'll do a blog post on it!