How I made my College Life easier with Notion (and how you could do it too)
Getting into college was one of the happiest day of my life however no one told me it was going to be so breathtakingly difficult. I was a computer science major and all my classes required keeping track of tons of notes, exams and assignments.
It was very overwhelming for me at first. Everyone seemed to be busy among themselves. I was so busy finding the right rooms and organising my life that I felt this is what college life would be all about. I had seen people going out having fun but with this much chaos around me, I was minutes away from breaking down.
I realised that college will always be tiring if I don’t manage is effectively. So I did what I am best at doing — taking my problems to notion and creating a solution there. Here is how I created a university tracker in Notion and honestly, this is the soul reason I was able to catch a breath of fresh air
- Adding my classes and Schedule
I added all my classes at one place to keep a track of my courses. This was I can visually see my labs, lectures and the free time I get each day. In each course page I added the professors’s information, homework, notes and the completion bar.
As you can see, I added the total chapters in the course and the chapters that I have gone through. The status bar will show me the progress I have made in each course. This ended up being quite helpful as I was able to pay attention to the chapter I was lacking behind in and revise the chapters which I had already gone through.
2. Goals and Reminders
I wanted to perform my best in each course. The tough courses like DSA and ML would take a lot of my time, so as a reminder I made a goal grade list — which would be like a motivation for me. I added the marks that I am aiming to achieve in the subject, seeing which I wanted to study harder. I also added a pomodoro times to help me with my breaks and study time.
Now the exam and assignment tracking. I would usually write down the deadline but then forget in which diary I wrote it down. There are a ton on coding assignments, essays, minor tests and major tests. It was practically impossible for me to manage them. I even missed a deadline once and had to plead to the professor to take a late submission.
To make sure that never happens again, I added a deadline tracker here to tell me how many days I have until the D-day.
The reminders section is for miscellaneous information that I wanted to keep in mind.
3. Notes and References
My study notes are 90% of the time PDFs that I got online, youtube lectures, professor notes which would lie around in my phone or some webpages.
So i created a list of all my study material and tagged them on the basis of the course. I was also able to filter this list so that If i want to refer to the notes of my Statistics class, I could do that. I also added an additional status to help me see which resources I have studied and which are left.
That would be it! College became way easier for m when I was able to manage my classes. College also taught me that
- Having fun is as important as studying: For my first year I spent time making friends and networking but less time on my studies. When I came to my second year I had started becoming more serious about my academics so I allotted days when I would study and hang out with friends. Anyone who says that college is for only fun and no studies, they are lying.
- Manage your finances: With the part time jobs, overhead loans and minimum pocket money- managing finances was another huge task. Have a clear idea of much you want to save and make sure you are budgeting.
- Eat healthy and Sleep tight: Please don’t forget to eat healthy and maintain a sleep cycle. One might not realise it initially but a bad sleep cycle and uneven eating habits can do harm to your physical and mental health.
Apart from that I also bought the student OS and ultimate planner dashboard from Gridfiti to help me with extra work.
Since this template was helpful for me, I wanted other college students to have it too. Here is the template (free) :
Check out my templates: https://moulshree.gumroad.com/
Mail: moulshreee@gmail.com
Twitter: itsmoul
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