How to Have the Best School Year Ever! (The MODG Message)

Okay so school is hard, but it’s also something that is necessary. So how do you make the most of your time in school? Well, the best way to ensure that you get all your homework done is to make sure you actually do it. For that to happen, you need to be organized!

What does ‘being organized’ mean? Well here’s a scenario that has happened to me multiple times: I have all my books on my desk, I have my notebooks, pens and paper at hand, I have my syllabi open with all my assignments, and I have a schedule with class and test dates taped to my wall. You’d think I’d be organized enough to have a productive school day, right? Wrong! The problem was that most of my ‘organizing’ was just neatness. While neatness is one of the organizational skills you need, it wasn’t enough to ensure I had enough time or energy to complete ALL my homework for the day. My daily goal for a school day is to finish my assignments with my best work. However, with the system I had set up, I was scrambling to finish assignments late in the day and occasionally pushing homework to the next day.

What could I have done? Well, I could have set a timer; thirty minutes to an hour per subject would have helped me with pacing. This tip is very specific to yourself but I’ll try to explain: If you know that History is going to have a lot of in depth reading or that it takes you a long time to understand the concepts in Grammar, then you might want to spend forty-five minutes to an hour on those subjects. On the other hand, if you’re a math whiz who completes your assignments really quickly or if science only requires a short amount of reading, then spending an hour on those subjects is a waste of time that could be used to focus on your harder subjects.

Another part of the scenario that I could have fixed is the amount of ‘school’ stuff in my immediate area. Did I really need all that? Well if I’m going to be working on different subjects at different times I should only have supplies for that subject in my desk. This of course has the problem of what to do with all your other things. Easy. Place your things in a bookshelf, under your desk, or even on your bed (that’s what I do).

Lastly, what do you do with all the information you’ve collected because you can’t expect to keep it all in your head? One, if you have a school folder, give each of your subjects a separate tab in it. Here’s where you put your syllabi, the stuff from the resources tabs, and even hyper-specific schedules of class and test dates per subject. Two, if you like to write down information to reread later, make sure you have a notebook per subject and that your notebook and textbooks never leave each other. Also, your writing utensils should never leave your notebooks. If you have notes from multiple classes in multiple places, it’ll be hard trying to locate everything.

To conclude, being organized (or maybe ‘focused’ is a better word) means to prioritize your work time, to keep your space clutter-free, and to make sure your information is stored properly.

Thanks for listening, this has been Johannes Carrillo for the MODG Message. Please go and check out all the other cool things we have in the MODG Message and the MODG News Site. To God be the glory!