Get Organizing for College - Week 7: Class & Big Projects
Worksheet - Actions for This Week: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1s...
Links to Additional Videos:
How I Use Todoist for College: • How I Use Todoist for College or Univ...
Planning for Big Projects: • Plan Big Projects and Papers with Goo...
My spreadsheet for Planning: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/...
Today's video is the last in a 7-part series to help you Get Organized for College. This video discusses how to plan well for classes and deal with large projects or papers.
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*** A full transcript can be found at www.marblejar.net. ***
Hi, everyone! This is Lara Hammock from The Marble Jar Channel and today's video is the last in a 7-part series to help you Get Organized for College. This video is all about how to plan well for classes and deal with large projects or papers.
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Plan for Classes
In this final video, we are finally going to talk about how to plan for and organize each of your classes at the beginning of the semester. The nice thing about college classes is that the professors generally have done most of the planning before the class even starts. Once you get the syllabus, you will have a good idea of the all of the reading, assignments, and workload for each class. The first week of classes for me is a planning week. I spend at least a couple of hours per class on that first week planning everything out for the semester. So what does that mean? I will map this out based on the organization tools that you have already set up.
Digital Notes - For each class I create a note with the professor's contact information, office hours, and any website links. I also write down important info like the grading scale and the weight for each assignment. I may even scan the syllabus and attach it to the note. I always make this a digital note since I want to be able to access this information from anywhere.
File Organization - Depending on how I've decided to take notes, I set up either a paper file system or digital file system for each class. This means either a color-coded binder, tabs, and file folder for each class, or a new folder and tag in a digital system.
Task Management - I love it when professors are super detailed in their syllabus. I look for that detailed table that tells me what readings and assignments are due each week and I take the time to preload them into my task management system. I use Todoist and have a video that gives more specifics, but basically, if the professor has laid out what is expected on a weekly basis, I plug all of those assignments into Todoist in advance with the due date being the Monday of the week it's due. That way, every Monday, all of the assignments for the week for each class will pop up which I can then assign to different days of the week depending on what my study schedule looks like. I prefer to have this all loaded in at the beginning of the semester since otherwise it takes time each week to refer back to the syllabus and plug it in for each class.
Calendar - the last thing I do for each class is determine when big projects or papers are due. I immediately put those due dates on my calendar. Large projects are different from readings or small assignments since generally there will be multiple steps over a longer period of time to complete them. Which brings us to how I
Plan for Big Projects or Papers
The most important two concepts required for planning out long-term projects are starting early and chunking it down into smaller tasks. I know this is not always the way you like to work, but when you've only given yourself 2 days to research, outline, write, and edit a 15 page paper, I think it's safe to say that you aren't putting forth your best work. Not only that, but by putting it off until the last minute, you are still kind of stressed about it the whole semester. So, start early and get a little done at a time for less stress and a better work product. Again, let's talk about this based on the tools you've already set up.
Task Management - During that first planning week, you do NOT need to plan out all of the steps for every paper and project due for the semester. That would be overwhelming. However, you do need to determine WHEN you will be doing the planning. For me, it depends on how big the project is. If it's a 10 page paper -- I might want to plan 4 weeks in advance. If it's a 20 page paper -- maybe 8 weeks. Either way, I'm going to look at the calendar, count backwards the right number of weeks and put a task in my task management system for a 30 minute planning session. And, for each big project that I have, I put in a separate planning task . . .