NOTE TO THE DISORGANIZED PERSON: If you are not naturally
an organized person this advice will seem daunting to you but I am the LEAST
organized person ON THE PLANET - and this SAVED my butt in college. The best advice I have
for you if you are disorganized is to accept that side of yourself and use
tools that are simple to keep you organized. Another great little tip is use
reminder apps like RE.minder; don't trust your crazy disorganized brain!
1. As soon as you get your syllabus' at the beginning of each
semester go to staples and get one those huge desk calendars (I’m talking 2 feet
by 2 feet... the bigger the better!) and then take it home and write down
everyyyy single assignment for every class of your semester on the calendar and
the percentage they are worth then hang them up on your wall (you can also get
glass ones). They may be ugly but that way you can see ahead of time what
assignments you have coming up so you can have them down on time. Then ready
BEST ADVICE EVER - aim to have every assignment done a week ahead of time. GO
TALK TO YOUR PROFS and ask for info on the assignments if they don't just give
you the info! This way you can also avoid major pileups by noticing, "ahh I
have 3 assignments due Feb 12th" then thinking to yourself "Because I
now know I have so many assignments due around the same time I will finish some
of these several weeks ahead of time". Use the blank weeks where you have
no assignments due not as party weeks but as weeks to complete assignments for
weeks where you have 2 or 3 assignments due. The advantage of doing this is not
only will you always have your assignments done on time, not only will you
avoid the last minute scrabble and therefore you will get better grades, but
also you should always have enough to spend on each assignment and STILL hang
out with your friends every week.... a healthy social life is important to
protect and one of the best ways to protect it is by protecting your time by
making sure you organize it ahead! Lastly, the reason we write down the value
of each assignment is that by seeing the value of each of them you can also
decide where you are going to spend the majority of your time. If something is
worth 2% of your overall grade you should be spending significantly less time
on it then something worth 10% or 20% of your overall grade. One of the biggest
downfalls of students is they enjoy one assignment way more than another so
they spend more time doing it rather than allotting time to grade point value.
A good loose rule is 1 hour for each grade point... I mean in some cases that
will definitely not apply but it should be close!
