OK, so you’re running late for your Monday morning class (again). You would have been on time, but you spent all Sunday watching TV (again), and had to stay up extra late to get your assignment done (again). Now, where the heck did you put that assignment? You tear through the pile of papers on your desk until you find it, crumpled and stained with last night’s coffee.

Sound familiar?

Now that you’re in college, you don’t have parents to bug you about keeping your room clean, or to tell you to turn off the TV and do your homework. As Spiderman says, “With great freedom comes great responsibility,” but when you’ve got no one to help you out, how do you stay organized?

You may not like it, but you’re going to have to make a sacrifice or two to get truly organized, starting with your precious weekend. Cancel your plans and put away your going-out top. It may suck now, but in the long-run, it will be worth it.

The first thing you need to stay organized is the right set of supplies. Get yourself up at a reasonable hour on Saturday morning and get your butt down to the school bookstore, or your local Staples or Target. You should buy:

-A notebook for each class - Or, even better, one large notebook divided into sections, so you can keep all your notes in one convenient, not-as-easy-to-lose place.
-A two-pocket folder or small binder for each class - to store all of those pesky class hand-outs that always seem to go missing
-A day planner - Each day should have enough space to write down your class schedule and any assignments you get. My personal fav is the Moleskin Weekly Planner, because it has an extra blank page next to each week, but whatever works best for you.)
-Lots of your favorite kind of pen (or pencil) - Don’t deny it. You know you have a favorite.
-A stapler - Especially if you write a lot of papers—your teachers will thank you.
-An accordion file Read More »

Shopping for college can be stressful: you don’t know how much room you will have in your dorm, how much is too much, if you’ve brought enough, and if it will match the stuff your roommate has.

Shopping for elementary school supplies was so much more fun - you got to stock up on your favorite Lisa Frank supplies and you begged your mom to buy you a few gel pens because everyone was using them.

This year, instead of making a quick pit-stop at Staples on the way to school and buying a few notebooks and black pens, why not bring some of that grade school excitement back with fun school supplies?

Remember how excited you were to use those gel pens to fill out worksheets in the first couple weeks of school? How cool it was to start a brand new notebook? Here are some funky school supplies that will make you want to head to class, take some notes, and do some hardcore studying. Or at least they will help you make friends by serving as a good conversation starter for the girl sitting next to you.

This stuff puts the “cool” back in school. Yeah…I went there.

Calculator - You will probably need to bring one of those nerdy graphing calculators to your Advanced Stats class, but why not buy one of those enormous & brightly colored calculators for when you just need to add, subtract, multiply, or divide? Math sucks, but bright pink makes everything better. Read More »