How I Stay Organized in College
Maddison Simmons
February 19, 2018
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I've always been fairly organized, but I realized once I made it to college that what I did to stay on top of assignments wasn't working out for me as well anymore. I used a planner all throughout middle and high school, but I used it less and less as I made my way through my first semester last year. Part of the problem was that I simply didn't open it up. I just used each professor's syllabus to check dates of tests and assignments. Although that worked, I was flipping through a lot of different papers, which annoyed me. I didn't want to print out each syllabus this semester, since the earth is dying and trees are important etc., but I knew I needed to do something new to stay organized. That leads us to today's post.
The first thing I did was make a huge master list of every assignment and test with Microsoft Excel. I got the idea from a blog post I originally found on Pinterest a few years ago. That post, which you can read HERE, goes through all the steps on how to create this master list/spreadsheet, but basically, all I did was use each syllabus and go month by month listing each assignment, test, and/or quiz, the due date, and what class it's for. It took a while, but it made the next steps so much simpler. You could stop there and just use this list as your main checklist, but I didn't like it as much as I thought I would, which leads us to our next step.
These are all of the materials I currently use to keep my life on track. I found both the planner on the left and the to-do list in the middle at Target for $1 each, and while I splurged and got a $20 Leuchtturm1917 on the right, you can easily find cheaper notebooks for a bullet journal. If you can only get one thing though, I would personally get the planner on the left. I don't know if Target is still selling them, but you can probably find something similar online on Amazon or something. It's just a simple 12-month planner with a page for each month.
As you can see, each day has plenty of space to write out what assignments you have. I took everything from my master assignment spreadsheet and wrote it down on this calendar. I assigned each class a color, which really helps me quickly distinguish what work I have to do for which class. That's what was missing for me on the spreadsheet: the color. This calendar is such an easy way to keep track of all of my assignments and make sure I don't miss anything, especially since professors don't remind you when assignments are due like they do in high school.
The next thing I do to stay organized is to make a section in my bullet journal where I list out all the homework that I have due that week. This is from my spread from last week. I do a simple circle/bullet, then I fill it in once I complete the assignment. If you want more information on how I set up my whole bullet journal, you can check out my last post HERE. It goes into more detail with pictures of each page/spread. Although it helps me stay on track and organized, it definitely isn't needed. I use it more as an actual journal, as I write daily reflections for the most part, but I like the creative aspect to it, since it's seen as more than just a simple planner.
The last thing I use to stay organized is a simple to-do list pad. Although I sometimes have a list of weekly to-dos in my journal, I really like this note pad because I can use it on days when I have a lot of things I need to get done. It's split into three different sections: a general to-do list (the main section), an urgent list (bottom left), and a someday list (bottom right). It's not something I desperately needed, but you know when you're at Target and you just keep adding things to your basket and then suddenly you're checking out and the total comes up and you're just kind of like okay there goes all my money? Yeah, that's what happens each time I go to Target, but their dollar section is just so cute!! I love all of the stationery they have, and it's a dollar, so you really can't beat it. Anyways, yeah, I got this because it was a dollar and I really like it.
Overall, this may seem like too many steps, but this helps ease my mind, as if I didn't have some sort of system like this, I would be checking each syllabus each night to make sure I'm not missing anything. There's so many different ways you can organize your life, this is just how I do it. I hope you've enjoyed this post and if you do anything similar (or vastly different) let me know in the comments below if you want.
~Maddison
