Organization is the key to success in college. Whether you’re a freshman looking to stay on track during your first semester, or you’re an upperclassman trying to improve your GPA, here are some helpful tips for how to get organized now and stay organized all semester.
First things first, buy a planner. And then actually write in said planner. Write your assignments twice if you have to—once on the day they’re assigned and once on the day that they’re due. It will take a few weeks of writing in your planner to make it a habit, but soon it will become second nature. Plus, you’ll feel a sense of accomplishment when you get to cross assignments off of your to-do list. For those of you with packed schedules, a trend in planners that a lot of college students love is planner pages that have sections for each hour of the day. Whether you plan out your day hour by hour, or you color code, or you just write down your assignments, planners are a college necessity.
It is also important to find a note-taking system that works for you. Maybe you like to have one binder or multi-subject notebook for all of your classes, or maybe you prefer to have one notebook for every class. Either way, the notes that you take in class can only be useful if you can easily find and access them. If your notes are all in a jumbled mess of binder paper in the bottom of your bag, all of that scrambling to copy down everything in your professor’s PowerPoint will have been for nothing.
Another tip is to pack your bag with everything you need for the next day before you go to bed. Sure, the last thing you want to think about when you’ve finally finished your homework is tomorrow’s lecture, but you’re more likely to forget something, or leave your assignment in the printer, or grab the wrong notebook when you’re rushing out the door in the morning.
Planning out your time is another important key for organization. Classes that only meet once a week mean you have a while to do your homework, but they also mean that you have a while to get caught up in other assignments, procrastinate, and forget about the reading that was assigned six days ago, and is now due…tomorrow. While it doesn’t have to be anything formal, (though you might consider writing it in your planner!) it helps to organize your week around your assignments and their due dates. Estimate how much time each assignment will take you to complete, and plan to do it when you have that amount of free time in your schedule. You will be much happier and calmer than if you continually push off all of your assignments until the night before they’re due.
It will also help you later in the semester if you plan out your time for tests, projects, presentations, and papers throughout the semester. It is so easy to focus so much on reading and assignments that deadlines for projects and papers can sneak up on you. It will help to organize your time spent on projects around your time spent on regular assignments, making sure to split your time between them. Even though it is easy to get overwhelmed by the amount of work these assignments will require, organizing your time throughout the semester will lead to less stress and better grades than waiting until the last minute. While you can afford to be more flexible with long-term assignments, you should still make sure not to procrastinate, as they are often worth a fairly large percentage of your final grade.
Hopefully these tips will help you get organized now and stay organized for the rest of the semester. The most important thing is to do what works best for you to stay organized and motivated. Hopefully these organization tips were useful and can help make this semester your best one yet!