5 Ways To Stay Organised At University

In less than a few weeks, I’ll be starting my third and final year at university. Right now, I’m a mixed bag of excitement and nerves and I can’t quite believe how quickly the time has gone. Given that I’m about to start one of the most important academic years of my life so far, and in the hope of helping anybody about to start their first/second/third years, I thought I would put together a few ways to keep as organised as possible at university!

BUY A FOLDER AND A HOLE PUNCH... For anyone about to start their first year of university, quick warning, you are going to be given a lot of sheets of paper. There is nothing worse than being asked to get something out and having to scramble through a million different sheets before finding what you need, so, buy yourself a ring-binder folder and a hole punch! Separate your folder into sections either by module/topic/whatever works for you, and every tim you get something handed out to you, put it in the right section! This will save so much time when you need to find something and personally it makes me feel much more calm.

START EVERYTHING AS SOON AS YOU GET IT... When you get given your coursework or essay briefs, start it straight away! Even if all you do is write down what topic you're going to study, just get something done initially. Then, when you eventually come to start working on it, it won't feel so overwhelming because you've already made some progress. I usually pick my topic and plan out my paragraphs as early as I can, then when I come to writing it I'm not just staring at a blank page with no structure!

MAKE USE OF YOUR BREAKS... In both my first and second years, I had a lot of breaks. Some of them were 2/3 hours long and usually my friends and I would just sit in the canteen and talk those hours away. Even though we had a lot of fun, it was definitely not the most productive use of my time and I could've spent those hours getting work done so that I could relax when I came home. I'm not saying fill up every break with work because you do need time to relax and socialise as well, but just find the right balance. I'm definitely going to be using my breaks more efficiently this year!

GET YOUR UNI EMAIL ON YOUR PHONE... You're going to be getting emails left right and centre throughout your uni years so make sure you can access it through your phone. Whether it's a cancelled lecture or a revised essay deadline, you're going to want to know about these things as soon as possible!

WRITE THINGS DOWN AS YOU FIND THEM... More specifically, references. If you're doing some reading and you find a useful bit of information, don't just write the quote down, write down everything. The book title, the author, the page number, the chapter... write it all down! I can guarantee at some point whilst writing an essay you'll desperately want that bit of information you found a month go but can't remember which book it came from because you didn't write it down. Whenever you get any piece of important information, write down the source!

What do you do to stay organised at university?
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