Hi everyone! Happy October!

I had a crazy week last week and calling it crazy is a positive way of saying ABSOLUTELY HORRIBLE, GUT-WRENCHING week. I had so many presentations and midterms, it was insane… Bad, bad week, but its a new month and a new week so we’re onto new and better things!

I wanted to make a post for organization tips since many of my friends struggle with staying organized school-wise. These tips are what keep my grades looking pretty and what keep me sane.

• A Physical Calendar
  • • • Immediately after the first day of classes, I pull out my calendar and different color pens and fill in the important dates from each syllabi I receive. I fill in dates for tests, essays, quizzes, etc. Along with that I also write the percentage that each test is so it stresses me out (in a good way) or so it puts that assignment in perspective. Say that week I have a presentation worth 2% and a paper worth 20%. That week I will focus most of my attention on the paper and the rest on my presentation. Putting important dates along with their weight on my calendar has saved me!
• Post-It’s with Grading Scales
  • • Whenever I’m working on an assignment I like to know how much it is worth so I can work extra hard to make it perfect or so I don’t stress as much because I know that doing bad on it won’t be the end of the world. I like putting boxes next to these assignments because it is SO satisfying to check off the boxes!
• A Planner
  • • • • Pretty self-explanatory. You get your homework, you write it down. It comes with monthly calendars as well. I can’t live an academic year without a planner. I discovered the power of planner in middle school and have not lived a school year without one since.
• A Weekly Post-It
  • • My stack of pink Post-It’s are reserved as my Weekly Post-It’s. Every week I take one of these and divide it into seven different sections, each section represents a day. In each section I write what I have to accomplish in that day. Big nerd moves.

• iPhone Notes
  • • I’m the most list obsessed person you will ever meet in the world. Whenever I get overwhelmed I’ll pull out my iPhone’s Notes app and write a list of everything I have to do and rank it from which one I have to finish first and which one is due later. Then, beside it I will write what day I will focus on what assignments in order to stay on top of everything.
• iPhone Calendar
  • • The University of Iowa loves making students’ lives easier. That’s why they allow us to link our academic calendars to iPhone calendars. So, if you didn’t know that you could do that, now you know. It’s life changing. In my iPhone calendar I have my school calendar in orange and my meetings in blue.
• A Desktop of Syllabi
  • • Another necessity I discovered freshman year of college that I will use for the rest of my academic life. I download all the pdf versions of my syllabus and put them all into one desktop on my laptop. Then I scroll through it as each week passes. Having this lets me know what to expect from each class and what important dates are coming up. I also keep my digital sticky notes on that desktop. Life. Changing.

I hope these tips help some of you! Let me know some of your tips!