Maddison's Musings

I have been a grad student for 18 days now and I have not died yet, so I’m counting that as a win. After two years of considering if I really wanted a second degree or if I just missed the validation I received from being a good student, I’ve finally gone back to school. My master’s program is all online and go at your own pace, so I only take one class at a time and I should finish each class in about five weeks or so.

As I try to find my groove with the work/school/life balance, I’ve found myself using any and every type of scheduling system. I have my bullet journal. I bought a planner. I use Google Calendar. And I’ve even tried to figure out how Notion works. Am I doing the most? Yeah, probably. But does it work? I don’t know, I’m figuring it out, okay.

Although Notion looks beautiful, I cannot figure out for the life of me how to get it to work. I duplicated this beautiful template that I found by googling “pretty notion templates for students” and it’s my favorite color so I pounced on it. I figured out how to get the weather to my location thanks to the tips from the creator and I linked to the focus music video I play on YouTube and Spotify’s peaceful piano playlist, and then I kind of left everything else. I tried making the calendar work for me, but I got annoyed since I already had everything on Google Calendar. So I just kind of left everything and mainly just use Notion as a pretty startup page at the moment.

At the end of the day, I always love having a physical copy of all of my plans. I usually use my bullet journal for this, but I bought a simple weekly planner the other month that I’ve been using just for school and work, and I’ve found that using that planner makes me use my bullet journal less. While I think that I will still keep my bullet journal, I feel like it will be better for me to use it to track personal things, such as my mood and what I did that day instead of using it to plan my life.

I think I thrive in orderly chaos. That’s what I’m going to call this system of doing the most to try to find some peace of mind: orderly chaos. I simply need a separate notebook/journal/planner for every little thing I do (as well as digital and physical options) otherwise my brain short circuits.

Since it has been two years since I graduated with my bachelor’s degree, I was trying to remember how I stayed organized when I was in undergrad. Thankfully, I’ve had this blog for long enough that I made that exact post back in 2018. While that system was great for keeping track of multiple classes, I’m still struggling with finding the perfect system for my current experience (all online, no set deadlines). I think that I’m just going to keep messing with it, and hopefully, I’ll find something that works. As of right now, I’m kind of just doing everything and seeing what works and what doesn’t.

If you’ve read this far then you have all of my love. I hope you’re doing well and staying safe.

~Maddison