University is tough to go through! School is mandatory and expected for most of us, but it can be stressful. The best way to keep those terrible feelings away is to stay organized. That’s why we have back-to-school spreads to keep us sane! Bullet journaling is the best way to keep yourself organized during school.
When I was bullet journaling in school, I was so much happier. I felt organized and on top of all my assignments. (It was also great to have a creative outlet!) The back-to-school spreads below are what I used to keep me rational and balanced in my school work. I know they will be helpful to you too!
School Schedule
First and foremost, you need your schedule. Keeping track of your schedule is the best way to get to class on time. I was prone to forgetting where my classes were or at what time they were being held. That slight moment of forgetfulness would cause me to panic and I would have to look up my schedule again.
It was so much easier to look up my schedule in my bullet journal than to go through all those links to find the syllabus for each class. It took a lot of the stress off my shoulders and saved me plenty of time. You should definitely have your schedule written down somewhere.
Here are a few of the designs I used for my school schedule:
Assignments Due
A spread for all of your assignments is a great way to stay organized! I added all of my assignments in one spread for all of my classes. For each class, I always had at least 3 things I was being graded on. Because of that, it was so hard to track when everything was due. I decided to try organizing all of my assignments in one place. The spread tracked all my assignments and quizzes, when they were due, and how much they were worth.
However, this spreads takes time and effort to create. Some classes had close to ten assignments and quizzes each. Adding them all to the spread and planning the page space isn’t the easiest thing to do. It does need a little more effort to plan this schedule than others, but it is so worth it.
You’ll always have your assignments all in one place. It makes it so much easier to organize your schedule and to send in all your projects on time. I know I loved this spread when I was in school!
Ideal Routine
An ideal routine is basically like having a goal for your day. You set your goal for what you want to accomplish every day. You can tell yourself how much time you want to spend studying, how much time you want as free time, and how you should plan your sleep schedule. It’s true that you won’t follow your ideal routine every day or even most days, but having a goal helps you to know what you are aiming for.
An ideal routine gives you something to aim for. You may want to study in the morning or in the afternoon for a few hours every day. By telling yourself that is what you want, you are more likely to actually follow that routine. You should make a routine so that you know what you should be doing every day based on your own expectations.
Study Tracker
Honestly, the study tracker and I had a love-hate relationship. I know I needed to track my studying, but it was always so frustrating to document that I hadn’t studied enough or at all. But the study tracker was something I needed, which is why I had a love-hate relationship with it.
Tracking your studies might even encourage you to study more often. Seeing that you are studying as often as you planned can motivate you to keep trying.
The study tracker is incredible for creating your own studying schedule! When you track how much you study every day, you get to see which days of the week are more conducive for studying.
Even better, if you track what time you study during the day, you can see which times are better for you to study. You can tell if you are a morning, afternoon, or evening studier. It really helps you in the long run to have all this information.
Reading Schedule
Along with a spread for all of your assignments and their due dates, I had a page with all of the readings I needed to get done every week. When I got my syllabus at the beginning of the semester, they included the readings the professors would be lecturing on each week.
Out of all the back-to-school spreads, this spread is probably the hardest one to create because there is just so much information to include. But if you need organization for your readings, you are going to want this spread.
Having all of your readings in one place makes it easier to organize your schedule. You have all of the stuff you need to read in one place; therefore, you can plan your studying schedule so much better than if you needed to pull up all of your syllabi on the internet every week.
Grade Tracker
As much as we try to play it down, our grades in the classes do impact the course. Every project and every quiz plays a role in your final grade, no matter how small. This is why I wanted to have a spread for all of my grades. Every grade counts!
Of course, you can add your grades to your assignment tracker, but you don’t always have space on the page for that. Because of this, the grade tracker is separate. It really helps to keep track of all your grades when you are trying to calculate how well you need to do on the final to pass the course. Let’s just say it’s better to be safe than sorry.
Exam Date Tracker
The final and easiest of the back-to-school spreads is the exam date tracker. My university didn’t post the time of the exams until later in the semester, so I didn’t always add them to my assignment schedule. It was great to have an extra page where I could write down all of my exam information. That way, I always knew where I had to be and when.
It was also so rewarding to finally be able to cross off each exam on the list as I completed them.
The exam date tracker was easy to make too. You don’t typically have that many exams to fit into one page. I would suggest you have a separate page for your exams too. At the very least, it’s great to have a page with all of your exam information, like location, date, and time.
There you have the spreads I used for my university years. School has never been easy. You need to organize, organize, and organize! University requires lots of forethought. You need to plan a lot in advance! These back-to-school spreads are great for making sure you stay on schedule with all of your classes, readings, and assignments. Trust me! School is so much better when you plan ahead.
