Get Organized for College or Grad School

Getting organized for college or grad school requires more planning than for high school because there is less inherent structure provided. Your classes may be different from those of your peers, and your professors will not be reminding you when things are due. By getting all the right supplies, saving time by planning ahead and taking advantage of digital tools, you can ensure you arrive on the first day of college or grad school completely organized.

Steps

Collecting Appropriate Supplies

1. Pick up your books. It’s important that you purchase all the required reading for your classes. Bring a copy of your reading-materials list to the school bookstore, and check off each subject you buy the books for one by one. When you are finished, double check to ensure you haven’t missed any.
   • Your teacher will not provide any materials they’ve asked you to secure. It’s also unlikely you can “borrow” a book from the teacher, as you might have been able to in high school.
   • Consulting your syllabi, organize your schoolbooks at home in the chronological order you will need them. You’ll be ready to read your way through the year and won’t struggle to find a title when you need it.
2. Buy a calendar or day planner. While at the bookstore, purchase a calendar that extends many months out, so you can keep track of dorm events, exams, papers and thesis presentations. Choose a planner that’s easy to carry with you and has plenty of space to create notes.
   • While digital planners are available, a paper planner enables you to see tasks for many months at a time at a glance. Many digital planners show a marker to indicate you have something a given day, but require you to click further to see relevant details. A paper planner, however analog, shows you all events and relevant notes easily.
   • Put important syllabi dates in your calendar before you start classes. You can hit the ground running and see what will be due right away, while everyone else is still getting oriented.
3. Get all necessary school supplies. Look over your syllabi and take stock of the basic school supplies you will need to complete the assignments listed, such as binders, pens, dividers, and notepaper. Make a list, checking off any you already own. Purchase any you don’t have from an office supply store, such as OfficeMax or Staples.
   • Color coding can help keep your materials for different subjects better organized. Simply assign a color to each subject and purchase a binder, notebook, etc. for that class in that color. It will make keeping track of your notes and materials easier if you always know where to look.
   • Get a sheet of stickers in each color as well. You can code handouts, too, so you know at a glance what subject they belong to.

Saving Time by Planning Ahead

1. Keep a copy of your class schedule in your calendar. The first few weeks of college or grad school it can be difficult to remember exactly what time each class starts and what days they meet. Create a master schedule of a typical week and tape it on the inside front cover of your calendar so you can always have it with you for reference. You can include not only classes, but also any internships, music lessons, or recurring appointments you’ll need to contend with on a weekly basis.
2. Map out your class routes on campus. Unlike high school grounds, college and graduate campuses can be large and confusing. Before the first day of class get a campus map and mark where each of your class buildings is located. This will help you know how where your classes are relative to one another.
   • If you have time before the first day of school, it can be helpful to do a dry run of the routes you’ll take to from building to building. This will give you a better idea of walking time and help you familiarize yourself with the best way to go.
   • If you’re someone who plans to bike on campus, you can also note good places to lock your bike, for example. Or if you’ll need to grab lunch between classes, you can find a good place on the way or plan to bring a snack.
3. Create reading-assignment bookmarks. At the beginning of your semester, make an index card bookmark with the pages assigned and corresponding due dates for each of your books. For example, for your Chemistry book, you’d write “Chemistry” at the top of an index card with 9/5: 1-47; 9/12: 48-102; 9/19: 151-160; 9/26: 161-194. This way, whenever you have a spare moment, even without your syllabus, you can get some reading done.
   • If you prefer a digital approach, make digital reading assignment notecards using the “Notes” app or something similar in your phone. That way, even if you just have your phone and book with you, you’ll know what to read.
4. Make a study schedule. Take a look at your class schedule and see when your free time falls. Use this information in combination with the time of day you feel most productive to create a study schedule. By scheduling time to study and do work for each of your subjects, you’ll maintain better organization and keep on top of your work.
   • For example, if you’re a morning person and have lots of free time in the mornings every Thursday, that would be a good time to tackle studying for your most difficult subject.
5. Prioritize your assignments. On Sunday of every week, look at the week ahead and make a list of all the assignments that are due in your various classes. Next to each estimate how long it will take you. If you’re not precisely sure how many hours, break it down into days. Is it an assignment that can be done in one day, or will it take more? Assign each project an appropriate place (or multiple) in your study schedule based on your estimate.
   • It can be helpful to leave one study session a week that you set aside for studying but don’t allocate to a particular assignment. Use this window as a buffer to complete any assignments that run beyond the time you’d anticipated.

Optimizing Digital Tools

1. Create a computer filing system. Whether you like to save your essays locally on your computer or on a cloud service like Google Drive, set up a filing system for your classes ahead of time. Make one folder for each of your classes and subfolders for any recurring type of assignment, like a weekly writing exercise.
   • You can even color code your digital folders to match your real life color-coding system for even more precise organization.
2. Set up an email filter for your different subjects. You can set up filters to funnel messages from your professors into individual class folders as they come in. This way, you’ll never have to dig through your email trying to find that one special email your professor sent with an important addendum or due date change.
3. Use your smartphone to create reminders for important events. Whether it’s an orientation meeting for freshmen or a one-on-one with a teacher, it can be helpful to schedule digital reminders for one-off events that might disrupt your normal schedule. Most phones have calendar features that will remind you of an upcoming event 5 minutes, 10 minutes, or 30 minutes beforehand. Use these to help yourself keep on top of new or last-minute meetings you might forget to consult your regular calendar about.

Balancing Academics and Life

1. Work when you need to work and play when its time to play. It may seem straightforward, but try to simply be where you are supposed to be without worrying about the other facets of your life. If you’ve made a good study schedule that addresses your academic needs, you’ll feel much more at ease on a free night hanging out with your friends.
   • Try not to overdo alcohol, which can leave you with a hangover and cut into your productivity the following day. It is difficult to catch up.
   • Especially if you are in graduate school—often at a job during the day and taking classes at night—it is critical to use your time as you have allotted it. You will start to fall short professionally if you’re always finishing your grad school homework on your lunch break. Similarly, your academic performance will suffer if you’re working on a PowerPoint while you’re supposed to be listening to a lecture. It may be helpful to schedule the hours of your workday just as you schedule your study time to keep yourself on track. Try to break the day into tasks that will happen before lunch and tasks that will happen after.
2. Prioritize learning rather than a given grade. In the later years of college and especially in graduate school, you’ll be focusing more on your major rather than fulfilling course requirements. As you focus more intently on the subject you came to school for, it is the right time to let go of perfectionism. Focus on getting the most out of your lessons rather than a perfect score. Absorbing more information that interests you will serve you better as you make career decisions going forward.
   • This doesn’t mean that you should check out of classes that don’t interest you, but rather, that you should devote more of your time to what really piques your interest. You may find that in doing so, the social and academic aspects of your life can enhance one another.
   • For example, if you love not just writing, but specifically play writing, use could use your social time to see performances. Both parts of your life will benefit.
3. Assess wasted time. If you find you’re having trouble getting everything you want done, take an honest look at how you’re using your work or study time. If you’re spending 10 minutes of every hour refreshing your email browser or playing an internet game, you’re not getting the most out of your attention span. Having to begin tasks many times over will disrupt your social, academic and work schedules.
   • If you find that despite your best efforts, you are falling behind, it might make sense to reassess your commitments. Dropping a class or activity can buy back some critical time if you’re already maximizing your attention and organizational scheduling.

Tips

• Colored stickers with different shapes make great ways to reference important things. Use stickers in conjunction with a key for quick referencing through notes, for example.
• Use a highlighter to help you review, not to point out what you should learn later.
• Check off or cross out completed assignments with a single line so you can review later, if necessary.

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