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Be Productive This Semester

This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at UC Berkeley chapter.

Ninjacourses.com
We all know that trying to organize our courses through Telebears can be tiresome and incredibly inefficient.  Instead, create a free account with ninjacourses.com to optimize your academic schedule.  Simply input the courses you wish to take for the semester and Ninjacourses finds your class lectures times, final exam dates, professor ratings, and websites to purchase course textbooks.
 

StayFocusd
We’ve all been there where we tell ourselves, “Just five more minutes on Facebook, and then I’ll get back to reading.”  And before you know it, you’ve gone through your friend’s entire Facebook photo album and it’s 1:00 AM.  Stayfocusd is a productivity extension for Google Chrome that allows you to block or limit access to “time-wasting” websites.  Once you have used up the allotted time, Stayfoused will block access to those websites for the remainder of the day.  With Stayfocusd, I can drastically cut down on the amount of time I spend on social networking sites. Check out the Google Chrome extension here.
 

Evernote:
Evernote is a software that can be downloaded on your computer and mobile device.  Evernote serves as a productivity tool that allows you to take your notes anywhere you go and easily organize content through tagging.  You can take pictures of business cards, receipts, and documents and have them synchronized with your mobile and desktop. With the Evernote Firefox extension, you can clip entire web pages and documents and have them stored offline on your mobile or desktop. I use Evernote to store short readings I don’t have time to print out for class, or for short to-do lists and grocery items.  Learn more about Evernote here. 
 

Google Calendar
A heavy course load paired with extra curricular activities can make it hard to keep track of important dates and events.  My recommendation is to write out all your important tasks ahead of time.  But if you’re like me, I find it hard to always keep my planner on me so I prefer to map out all my major assignments, events, and club meetings on Google calendar.  Google calendar can also send email reminders of events and send alarm reminders to your mobile device when synced to your smart phone.
 
 
 
 
 
 

Elizabeth is a senior majoring in American Studies with a concentration in consumer behavior at the University of California, Berkeley. You'll find her at the pool swimming with the Cal club water polo team or running through campus training for the next half marathon. In addition to an active lifestyle, Elizabeth loves to keep up to date with the latest tech trends and is always looking for a new recipe to try out! Elizabeth hopes to pursue a career in public relations and marketing after graduation.