Student Blog: Tools For Success!

In high school I had always been on top of my organizational skills and managed to do so without the help of a planner, however, this occasionally made for a recipe for disaster when I forgot about an assignment until the night before or the day of. For college, I wanted to avoid such problems and up my organizational skills so bought myself a nice little planner. It's super convenient, small, and lightweight with a calendar and a little section for setting goals and making to-do lists. It was quite fun to decorate and insert my schedule on and whatnot but by the first month, it was completely abandoned in the bottom of my bookbag. I found it a bit inconvenient to have to stop, find my planner in my bookbag, take it out and write down homework assignments and events especially because these due dates were often said as a quick offhand comment. I will admit planners have their benefits and I even have friends who say they couldn't have survived this semester without them, they might not be for me but can definitely benefit someone else!

A more convenient alternative for a planner that I found was Google calendar. I had never heard of Google calendar, let alone know of its many abilities until my college orientation. My school linked our calendars to the orientation events so we had our itineraries right on our phones. However, my favorite part about this was the notifications we received 10 to 5 mins before each event with the location of the event! This is what sparked my idea to use Google calendar to organize my schedule. It truly is the best on days when you're too tired to remember what day it is (college am I right?!) and you almost miss your class! As a student who also works while in college, Google calendar helps me organize my shifts according to my class schedule and even helps when planning outings with my friends! The biggest benefit I have found to Google calendar is that it's all done electronically, meaning I could easily access it on my computer during class! No more obnoxiously digging through my bag in the middle of a lecture!

Finally, last but certainly not least was the My Study Life application which can be done on your phone or computer! My Study Life serves as many things, a planner, calendar, schedule, and to-do list! I found out about my Study Life during my senior year of high school through my sister who swears by it. I use it mostly for its to-do list maker. It's so helpful because it allows you to organize your task by class, keep track of your progress and keep track of your time before the due date. I especially love it because, unlike paper to-do lists, you can't lose it! While I had always appreciated My Study Life, I never truly realized how much help it would be for college students until it came time for registration. There truly was nothing I feared more than registration, I had heard so many horror stories about important classes closing because you can register, websites crashing, and having conflicting classes. As someone who plans everything down to the second, I was confident in my planning skills as I thought I would have enough time to learn how to register and meet with my advisor and plan what classes to take... WRONG. Because I am in the honor program I register early, giving me a single weekend to plan it all out! Thankfully, my advisor was super helpful and I sought out the advice of a kind upperclassman in the theater studies major, I was able to get it done! But not without trial and error. Prior to asking for help, I had selected a bunch of fun classes I wanted to take and was absolutely confident that it was a good schedule, well sadly like all first drafts of a schedule, it had to be scrapped, many of the classes interfered with one another! The second time around I used My Study Life's schedule-making feature to insert the times and days of each class to visualize my schedule and see if I had enough time to study, work and have some free time! I now swear by it so if anyone needs this kind of help for registration or everyday activities I highly recommend it! Good luck to everyone wrapping up this first semester, you're doing great!!