How To Make Your Planner Work For You

Photo credit: churl han

Last week, we outlined the 3 Things You Need For The Next Semester. Now that you have your daily or weekly calendar, here’s what to do with it to make sure you have time to get good grades, stay involved on campus, and still have a life! Successful college students live by their calendar, and carry it around with them everywhere. They consult it before agreeing to anything. It’s your lifeline to sanity (and good grades!).

When you get your planner, go through and mark down important dates – birthdays, holidays, anniversaries, and other important non-school events. If your birthday falls during the school year, decorate that page!

As soon as you get your syllabi from your courses (usually available on the college’s website a week or more before classes start), go through your planner and write down the dates of tests, homework due, presentations, field trips, days off, final exams, and any other dates noted in the syllabi. If available, also write in your reading assignments. This way, you’ll always know what is going on, even if you miss class. And it will help you see, at a glance, when you have an intense week of exams or presentations.

Also write in other standing engagements – campus organization meetings, tutoring appointments, work, and any other items that you can think of. This is a good opportunity to schedule in some gym time — if it’s on your schedule, you’re more likely to go! If it helps, treat your work-out time like a class: you have to go, and gaining that freshman 15 (even if you’re a senior) is your failing grade.

If it helps you, go through and highlight different items in different colors – maybe all tests are highlighted in orange, or math class and math tutoring are blue.

Now that all these dates are on your calendar, it’s time to plan for straight A’s. Yes, you can plan for A’s! Take time to mark the days on your calendar when you should start researching for projects, when the first draft should be done, when the revision should be done, and when the final copy should be done. Optimally, you’ll finish your papers several days before it’s due. Schedule in some time to visit the student help center, where they will check your grammar and format. Schedule time to study for exams for several days before the date.

This may sound like a lot of work, but it will help you immensely during the semester. It’s especially critical for maths, sciences, and foreign languages – you have to schedule time to study because if you get behind, you’re dead.

Once you have your planner in order, carry it with you! Take it to class, to club meetings, rehearsals, practices, when you visit your parents — everywhere! This book owns you now. Listen to what it says.

3 Things You Need For The Next Semester

The beginning of the semester is the most important time of the next few months. You may think that the most important time is finals, but nope – it’s the beginning. Before the classes starts, even! That’s because the beginning is your window of opportunity to get organized for the entire semester!

Photo credit: Mike Rohde

1. A planner. This is your lifeline to staying on top of coursework, campus organizations, birthdays, deadlines, and anything else you need to keep track of.

Go out and buy a daily or weekly calendar that can fit in your backpack or bag. During Back-To-School sales, they are less than $5 for a student calendar (the only difference between a regular planner and a student planner is that student planners are August-July instead of January-December and also usually have cheatsheets in the back for maths and sciences).

As soon as you are registered for your classes, go through your calendar and pencil in the classes every day. Don’t just write them in the first week – you don’t want to have to remember when your classes begin and end when planning with someone.

As soon as your get your syllabi (usually available a week before classes start), go through it and mark down every test, exam, homework due, field trips, days off, presentation, final exams – anything that has a date in the syllabi. Don’t be the doofus that doesn’t know when anything is due – write in your planner.

Expanding File Folders

2. Expanding Folders. These things have saved me many times!

Average folders cost $5-10 each, but you can often find them pretty cheap at Back-To-School sales, yard sales, estate sales, and thrift stores. If you get one with a ton of pockets, you may only need one. I got one folder for each course.

When you get your folder, place a spiral-bound notebook in it (for taking notes in class). When you get your syllabi, or if you print it out yourself, place this in a pocket as well. Your other pockets are for assignments to do, finished assignments to turn in, and graded assignments you’ve gotten back.

When it’s time to go to class, all you have to do is grab your textbook and your expanding folder, and you’ve got everything you need! (Just make sure that you put your finished homework into the folder after printing it!)

3. Highlighters. These are an absolute must for any college student. Get several colors (about $1-2 each for good highlighters that don’t fade).

Get a rainbow of highlighters for ultimate organization!

For books: highlight the things you notice in one color, and passages the teacher mentions in another color. This way, your papers and assignments can be top-notch!

For your planner: Highlight each type of event in one color (ie, tests are orange, club meets are blue, etc) or highlight each catagory in a different color (ie, language arts class and tutoring are purple, drama club and performances are green, etc).

Be sure to get highlighters that don’t fade. I got a cheap yellow highlighter my first semester, and when finals rolled around I discovered that the first month of readings had no markings! The highlighting had faded completely. While this was great for selling the book back, it was very difficult to study for my exam.

When you get a system of organization — stick to it! Try it out for at least a semester. If it doesn’t work for you, try something else. But don’t eschew organization completely!