hi! what do you do to prepare yourself for a new school year?
Hello! There are a couple of things I do, I’ll list them below:
I clean my laptop: I delete every document, recording, PowerPoint, video, etc. of previous academic year. I only keep my final summaries in PDF-format so I can send them to peers if they need it. I don’t keep any separate notes in a word-document, except if I have a different file with exercises for a certain course or something. Of course, this only counts if I passed the class. Basically, I only keep what I need to keep. It creates more space on my laptop and makes my laptop slow down less.
I clean my backpack: I have a bad habit of keeping loose pens, bits of paper, markers, etc. in my bag, so I completely empty my bag and throw away all the trash. I only keep what’s necessary: a couple of pens, markers, a ruler, a pencil, ... and a notebook just in case I need to write something down.
I clean my mail: my university has a habit of sending a lot of mails, so I’ll clean up the inbox and sent mails of my student mail account. I’ll keep the important mails (like money related stuff), but besides that, I’ll delete everything, so my inbox doesn’t get clogged.
I clean my phone: I delete downloaded files like notes or PowerPoints and delete all pictures I took in class like a scheme a professor has drawn on the board or a picture of a peer’s notes.
I clean my desk: I throw away my printed summaries if I used a marker in them. If it’s a clean and reusable summary, I’ll give it to another student or reuse it as scratch paper for eg. writing down groceries. I throw away my planners, I clean up my pencil holder and my shelves. I wipe down my desk, so I can start fresh.
I make a new folder on my laptop: in my first year, I didn’t really use folders on my laptop, so it was hard to find notes (especially if I named them ‘ufiozefozehi’ instead of ‘Law EU lesson 1′). Now, before every start of a new semester, I’ll make a new folder. This semester, it’ll be ‘MAS1SEM1′. Inside that folder, I’ll create new folders for every subject and give the folder the full name of the course, eg. ‘Law of the European Union’. If I want to save my notes, I can immediately put it in the right folder and they’ll be easier to relocate.
I sell my text books: since I study law, I find it useless to keep text books, since law changes all the time. What’s written in a textbook from 2018 often won’t be up to date anymore in 2025. By selling my books, I have some extra money and more space in my room. If I do need to look up something from previous years, I use my summaries to look it up, since I made or at least have a summary in PDF-format from every course I’ve taken.
I don’t buy new text books: I often see students buying all the ‘recommended’ books before the academic year has started (sometimes buying them from other students), but sometimes books get an update (which is often, because law is very dynamic), so the book from the year before is useless or the book ends up being unnecessary to pass the class (because notes of what the professor says are enough), so it’s wasted money. I always wait til the professors themselves announce if the book has been updated or ask peers if they needed the book to pass.
I buy new stationary: even though I barely write on paper, I like to buy a few cute and cheap things for the new semester, like a cute pencil case, pretty markers, etc. It makes the start of the new semester more exciting, because I look forward to using my new stuff.
I hope you can get some inspiration from this! X
