by D. Anderson

Created on: May 29, 2007

Day Planners are an essential tool for any college student to use. They are sold in college bookstores, department stores, or anywhere that stationery products are sold. They come in a variety of sizes and styles.

Choosing a Day Planner is something that will vary among each student, but a student must consider what they are going to use it for and how many activities or courses they are involved in.

A Day Planner must also be portable whether it is for a purse, briefcase or backpack. For a student to not have it on their person might as well be to have not bought it in the first place. Imagine the crisis if a student were to schedule something, only to go home and find that time slot filled with something else.

The first thing a student should do is to write down all the classes and their times. College courses do not run like High School where a student is basically occupied from 8 to 3 and just transfers from class to class. Some classes may all run close together, some classes might have long gaps in between each class. There is no rhyme or reason to the times set and it can often be difficult to remember whether a class starts at 10:05 or 9:50 a.m. Often, in between classes, a student might have an off- or on-campus job or might be involved in extracurricular or volunteer activities. Sometimes classes change times temporarily for one reason or another, and often final exams do not coincide with the times and days that the classes were originally held. Everything that a student needs to do throughout the day should be recorded in a Day Planner.

Study sessions, when to start or work on phases of a project, downtime, off-campus activities, tests, and cancellation of classes should all be recorded in a Day Planner. Often, the best Day Planner is one that has lines with times written next to each line. This will help a Day Planner to be neater and for a student to keep track of the times better. However, any method is fine as long as the student can understand it and it is useful to them.

Consider, also, the time it will take to get somewhere. Often students have to walk on campus or use public transportation to get anywhere off-campus. If a student gets out of class at 2:35 and will next be volunteering across town, but it takes 35 minutes to get there, then let the facility know that you can't be there before, let's say 3:30, in order to allow time to get home and change and catch a bus that may even be running late. Planning for instances like these (i.e., the late bus) will greatly increase a student's productivity and efficiency. College courses come first and job or volunteer work can be fit around the class schedules.

An example of an entry might be:

June 06, 2007
9:05-10:25 Geology
11:00-12:00 Grab lunch in the cafeteria
12:30-1:00 Meet with Jane to go over Geo. notes.
1:25-2:35 Chemistry
3:00-4:00 volunteer at the "Y."
5:00-6:00 Dinner in the cafeteria
6:30-8:30 study for Chem. Test

A college student with a Day Planner will be an effective college student, and find that the stress can be greatly reduced.

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