Staying Organized in College

As a 2nd semester Junior I feel I have a lot of wisdom to pass onto little freshies and freshettes that are just entering their new life. One of the most important thing I learned very quickly is that if you forgot something you normally forgot it big time. To avoid forgetage you have to stay organized. I tried various methods. Separate notebooks, organizers, etc. But I finally fine tuned it down to a system that is very organized and easy to use. This is perfect because it keeps everything in view and keeps you from losing papers. I can see this working for a high-school student as well. To set up your organizer you are going to need:

• 1 large 3-ring binder. Get one in a color you will like but not too fancy. You will probably wear it out in one semester anyway. Mine looks like this:

 My brother drew this picture for me. So I stuck it in the binder so I could see it every day. 

 It is nice because it has two inside pockets instead of one. I smudged out my student ID so nasty people can't hack into my account and give me bad grades. 

• One 3 ring hole punch. This is not completely needed, you could do it with a regular hole punch but a 3 ring makes it faster:

• One pack of highlighters. Try to find a pack that has as many colors as classes you have that semester. I normally take 5 classes and was lucky enough to find a pack that had 5. You will assign a color to each class and anything that needs to be highlighted for that class is only done in that color. For example I assigned English a blue highlighter. Anytime I had research I printed out I highlighted the information I needed in blue. I did this to make sure that if my papers got mixed up I could tell which research was for which class. 

• One pack of dividers. Make sure you have one for every class. You can pick if you want them to have pockets or not. I personally chose ones without for this semester because I was doing online classes. If I was in a classroom I would chose ones with pockets and any work I needed to turn in the next class would go into that pocket. 

• One sheet protector or hole reinforcers.This is to keep your weekly schedule in or to reinforce the holes in your schedule. I use reinforcers because I am too lazy to pull the schedule out and put it back in. 

SET UP

Setting up the binder is not hard. First place the dividers in your binder and make sure they are labeled neatly with the each class like so: 

Once your class starts either print another copy of the syllabus or make a copy of the one you get from your professor (or you could ask them for another copy). File the original one way in a file box. Make sure you keep all of your syllabi. Place the copy in your binder behind the divider for the corresponding class like so:

Now your binder is set up. 

SCHEDULE

If your professors post their syllabus online on a site like Blackboard, Webtycho, Moodle, etc then you are in luck. The following screen shots show you how to make a schedule for each week:

Open a Word document 

Open the syllabus 

Copy that week's assignments 

Paste it into the Word document 

See?

Do this for the next class

The finished schedule should look like this 

Highlight each class in the chosen color 

When you have finished an assignment highlight it. That way you can tell at a glance what you have to do. 

USING THE BINDER.

Any papers you get from class or create yourself should be punched and placed behind the divider that corresponds to the correct class. Make sure to keep all your research and papers you write. If anybody wants to know what to do with the papers at the end of the semester, let me know and I will show you. 

I hope this is helpful to somebody. If you want anymore advice on this topic let me know. Good luck in the next semester.