Preparing for a New Semester
It’s around the start of the semester for many of us, and here are some things you can do now that’ll help you have a good one!
🎯 Think of goals you want to accomplish
Whether it’s personal, financial, academic, etc., listing down specific, actionable goals will help you improve yourself and give you something to work towards. Reflecting on last semester/year also helps.
📚 Finalize courses and plan future courses
Some colleges (and even some high schools?) have a period during which you can go ‘course shopping’ and audit classes you want to take. But regardless of whether you’re still trying things out or have already finalized your courses, it’s important to keep track of your requirements.
You can do this however you think is best - I have a google sheet with the classes I’ve taken/plan to take and when I took/ plan to take them, along with my major/degree requirements.
At the beginning of the semester, I review my four-year college plan. I rethink the cohesiveness of my course combinations and whether or not I still want to take the courses I’ve listed (this mostly applies to major electives), as well as when I think is best to take each of these courses. I’ll also run this by my advisor to make sure everything’s good.
🎮 Create a game plan for each course
Based on the syllabi and my experience with the first couple weeks of the course, I’ll create a plan that’ll hopefully help me do well in the course. This includes planning
What kind of studying I’ll have to do (e.g. make flashcards? write formula sheets? keep handwritten notes or typed ones?)
How I’ll tackle assignments (e.g. do one problem from the problem set every day? work on projects over the weekend? meet with friends to go through the homework?)
How I’ll organize course material (e.g. how will I organize my digital files? will I need to keep physical papers and notes in a binder? how many sections will I need in my notebook?)
💡 Plan your ideal weekly schedule
I combine findings from my game plan and my goals for the semester to craft an ideal weekly schedule. After factoring in fixed meeting times like lectures, discussions, weekly club meetings, and meal times, the rest of my schedule is filled with time blocks, and is sort of a hybrid between regular time-based scheduling and flexible time blocking.
I try not to make things super specific, e.g. I’d plan for 2 hours of studying then a 30 minute break, but what I actually do with the 2 hours depends on what I need to get done that day. This leaves room for spontaneity, but of course, you could always plan things by the minute if that’s what you prefer.
📅 List important dates in a calendar
These are mostly exams and breaks, but what’s also really helpful is listing out all the dates when assignments are released and due so that you can budget your time and energy towards working on those assignments.
For example, if I find out I’ll have 3 problem sets due the same day, I know I’ll probably have to do a bit of each every day during the week before they’re due.
However, if I have one homework due Tuesday, and another due Friday, I’ll probably spend more time on the weekend working on the Tuesday homework, and more time during the week working on the Friday homework.
After going to my classes and finalizing my schedule, I’ll get the textbooks I need from amazon/chegg/online/the university store (as a last resort), as well as any stationery I don’t already have stocked up from the previous semester.
It’s helpful to go to class the first day and ask about the textbook because some professors, even though they assign a book, they’ll say it’s fine if you don’t have it, maybe because the lectures/lecture slides are comprehensive enough, or the library has many copies you can borrow.
In addition to that, there are some classes for which a textbook is assigned but is only used for reference, i.e. for additional explanation. In this case, I’d ask my friends or other people I know who have taken the course and see if they think the textbook’s useful.
Some classes also have special software that’s required, so I’d look into getting those. E.g. some classes use iClicker Reef which is like an online polling system that you have to subscribe to. Or for programming classes, different languages may require different environments, so I’d spend time setting things up on my laptop. This can take quite a while sometimes, and small errors in setting up can have pretty big consequences, so I’ll try to do this as thoroughly as I can.
It’s ironic that this is at the end of the list, but cleaning is one of the first things I do once I get back on campus. I’ll organize my digital files, clean my room, tidy my desk, keep last semester’s material in storage, etc. It’s always good to have the things you already have in order before you add/get more things.
Note: All the organizational tasks are in no way fixed. You should update each of them as you see fit, i.e. when you get more information as the semester progresses.
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