5 Tips on Staying Organized in College

Staying organized with so many different classes can be a huge struggle. These are 5 tips from personal experience that help me stay organized with a busy college life.

1. Clear Workspace, Clear Mind

One of the most important things to stay organized in College is to keep your workspace clean. 

How you define your workspace is up to you and based around your major and where you do the majority of your work. 

If you tend to work the most at your desk or just in your room, keeping those spaces clean and organized is step one. 

I found that it is helpful to have a small cabinet with a few drawers to store extra stuff underneath your desk just for some extra storage space. 

Having a clean top of your desk means that there are less distractions as you are working on your assignments and you will be more productive, which is important when you have a busy schedule and you are trying to balance your college life with at least a small amount of social life and still giving yourself time for you.

2. Color Coding Materials

Color coding the materials you use for each class you have during the semester can really help with organization. 

This is something I have done consistently from the 5th grade up to now as a second semester sophomore and I plan to use this method for as long as I can. 

Even when taking notes in class, it helps to use your colored pen to underline or write important topics in your notes and then use a pencil or black pen for everything else.

Personally, I use a pencil just because I mess up often or change how I want to write something down in class or when I am going back over my notes after class.

Somehow I managed to use the same mechanical pencil all through last semester and never lost it! Isn't that crazy?!

3. Writing out your Schedule

First thing you should do when you have signed up for your classes is write out your schedule. Personally, I’ll go as far as to draw it out so I can see where my free time is. 

After putting your classes in, you should write in time for each subject. 

Dedicating time to each subject outside of your class time is extremely important. Some people may choose to just dedicate time to “homework” or “studying” as a whole, but what they don’t know is that it can be far more beneficial to you if you dedicate time to a subject by itself. 

If you have time between classes, spending a little time going over the material you just learned in class will help you understand that material on a higher level. You can do this even by just rereading your notes or cleaning up any messy handwriting or misspelled words so your notes are easier to review later on. 

When writing out your schedule, I recommend giving yourself a window of time that you are willing to spend working on anything and everything. It’s like giving yourself a “work day”. 

For example, you could have your schedule be within a 12 hour period that you will dedicate to your school work. Any time outside of that 12 hour period can be for you to do whatever you wish. The tricky thing with this is if you make plans within that window. 

This just means you need to manage your time carefully so you can still complete everything you need to.

4. Maintaining a Routine

This goes along with the last tip and I already mentioned a bit about this in that section but this is going to be so helpful to keeping you organized.

Sometimes you might feel like you’re just going through the motions of completing your work and staying on top of all of your assignments and classes, but that’s when you need to remember that school is your job and the best way to have fun through college is to do just that, have fun.

Make sure that outside of that specified “work day” you have given yourself, you are going out with friends, participating in clubs, meeting new people, and keeping your brain active.

Find something that excites you outside of your major or minor that can help you take a break from thinking about all the work that you have to get through. 

Believe me, bingo nights at the MU were a LIFESAVER freshman year.

The fun you have is extremely important to keeping you motivated to get your work done. But think back to the main focus of this section, maintaining a routine. As long as you are maintaining the routine you have during your “work day”, anything you do outside of it can be as spontaneous and crazy as you’d like! (now please don’t go get yourself in trouble or anything) 

College is awesome and you need the healthy balance between school and fun. There is definitely going to be more time dedicated to your school time rather than fun/free time if you want to be a successful student but in the long run, you are going to be so thankful that you did to get yourself where you will be after college.

5. WRITE. THINGS. DOWN.

This is by far the most important tip anyone could give you when you are going through school at any age and level. 

Having a planner or a google sheet or excel sheet to write down assignments with due dates and color coding by class, as well as any events or plans you may have can be incredibly helpful when you are trying to maintain a busy college life. 

The list of things the average college student has to do each week makes it way too easy for something to be left out or forgotten if you don’t make a habit of writing everything down.

I have used a planner through all of college and before that, through middle school and high school.

Granted, the planners I used in middle school and high school were just the basic ones that the public school gave out to all the students but the last two years I decided to make it a little more personal to myself and I bought a blank book to do whatever the heck I wanted with it.

Back in middle school and high school, I was taking so many classes that if I didn’t write down my assignments SOMEWHERE even on just a sticky note, I’d forget and suffer the consequences.

The consequences in college can be much more severe or much less severe depending on your professor and how big your class is. But a good rule of thumb is to just write it down and avoid the possible conflict and issues if you don’t.

So those are my tips for you! You can use them, you can ignore them, but just know, they work for me and if you want to put the effort in to be truly organized, I’d use them. 

And hey, maybe you’ll come up with your own at some point along the way!