How I’m Planning For a New Semester

One of my favourite things about a new semester is being able to plan out my assignments and get ready for the term. Not sure if others can relate, but I love scheduling out my entire semester and getting a grasp of everything I’ll be doing. It makes me feel a lot more relaxed knowing that I know exactly what’s coming up! Today I want to go over the ways I plan at the beginning of the semester to keep myself on track.

First, I go through every one of my course syllabi and write down in a calendar the due dates of all my assignments. I used to do this in a paper calendar, but this term I switched to my google calendar and colour coordinated all the classes so I’d better recognize them! 

In addition to writing out deadlines, I also make notes of when I should start working on things. So, if I have two or three assignments due in one week, I’ll make sure to note the weeks following up to that week that I need to work on these assignments. That way, when it’s a new week, I won’t be shocked that there’s an assignment due as I'll have already started thinking about it or working on it.  

In addition to my calendar, I also find it helpful to make schedules every week of what I’m going to do every day. This helps me ensure I’m also getting smaller things done, like weekly readings for my classes and things I need to do for my clubs. 

I love my bullet journal for this, as it allows me to customize and create whatever format I want for planning. So, every week I write down a list of everything I need to do per day and tick it off as the day goes on. This really helps me structure my days and encourages me to break my assignments up into small pieces which I do over multiple days, making them feel a lot less intimidating! In the beginning of the term, I'll take advantage of the extra time I have and write out dates for the next few months so it takes less time to fill in later.

Finally, I have another section in my bullet journal to map out exactly what I'm going to do every hour of the day. To be honest, I find myself veering off these schedules pretty easily, but I find it really calming to plan out every hour of my day first thing in the morning, especially if I have a lot of work to do. It definitely makes me feel like I have a handle on my work.

What are your top planning tips? As you can see, I really like to plan, so I’d love to hear them!