By: Emily Joyce, SCS Advising Leader
As we begin to dive into the Spring 2023 semester, it is easy to get wrapped up in the excitement of new classes and catching up with friends as coursework begins. However, this is the most crucial part of the semester where it is important to take charge of your schedule and plans to set yourself up for a successful semester. Taking time to plan your days, classes, and studying will put you on the right track to staying on top of all your classes and make you less likely to fall behind as your workload and other responsibilities increase.
One way I like to set myself up early in the semester is to take some time after the first week of classes to make a spreadsheet of all my assignments, exams, and projects in Microsoft Excel and then organize them by the due date. This is useful because I can reference this document as the semester progresses to see what I need to focus on for the week or even just day-to-day. It also helps me to not forget about any assignments with future deadlines, which is difficult since sometimes they are easy to push to the back of my mind after only talking about them briefly in the first-class meeting. For example, if I find myself with some free time while at the library and take a look at my Excel sheet of assignments, I can be reminded that there is a research paper coming up in a few weeks in one of my classes and get a head start looking for information I can use to write it. This is a much more effective strategy rather than waiting until the last minute to start the research, which could fall at a time when I also have less availability to work on it. This method of studying and staying on top of classes is effective for lowering stress about classes because it keeps you in control of your schedule.
Another tool I like to use for managing my responsibilities throughout a semester is Google Calendar. This can help me manage not only my assignments, which I will add to the calendar based on their due date but also my additional responsibilities that I have to stay on top of throughout the semester. For example, it is a good resource to give me an overview of my week which sometimes can be filled with shifts for my job, meetings for my RSOs, and on top of that exams and homework. There are lots of other online calendars and resources that can be useful for this.
Finally, I find it useful to also have a plan in my head of what days I will focus on working on certain courses. For example, this semester I have ChBE 471 and ChBE 473 on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Therefore, on Tuesdays and Thursdays, I plan to go to the library after my classes are done and review the lecture material for the day and get ahead on assignments. This is just an example of a plan you can put forward and can be adapted for what works best with your regular schedule. There are lots of different methods for organizing yourself and starting with a strong lead for the semester, you just have to find the one that works best for you!