my younger sister is a soon-to-be freshman and as a 2020 high school graduate I though it would be very big sister of me if I were to hand off some advice to the younger children such as herself.
Why do I need a planner?
life if going to start being VERY VERY hectic, especially if you do other activities besides school work. Even though we are currently in quarantine it is good to have some sort of organization of your life or else things will get mushy and time will pass by quickly. Just have one usable planner to get your academic year started. Write down assignments and other chores such as watering the plants even. It is better to practice getting organized the sooner the better. There are many different options for planners! here are some of the ways I have used before:
Bullet journaling:
I used to bullet journal during the school year back when we were all still in class. It was super helpful and helped me keep my mind on track. Bujo was my favorite to use during the school year because I would work on spreads during downtime. Here are some pictures of my spreads (they were never pretty hahah!) :
Pros:
customizable!! Make whatever spread you want!! Flowers and stickers or even just a good ole' to do list will work too! I used to have whole blank pages just for planning club events and choreography. I used to have a mood tracker too!
relatively cheap Any good notebook/journal will work! For my senior year I used my 1/4 full sketchbook for junior year as my bujo and it worked pretty well!
easy to navigate! Since you are the one who is creating the spreads, you are the one in charge. You like lots of trackers and drawings? Put it in! You only like monthly spreads? GO AHEAD!!
Cons:
Easy to get caught up with the "aesthetic" and not think your bujo is pretty enough...BUT WHO CARES!!! Its your planner!! It should be fluid and comfortable to use daily. You can have pretty spreads one week and then black bullets points of the next! As long as it is helping you get your shit done its good! I am an advocate for those super pretty bujos with calligraphy and kpop boys, but I know that I myself cannot get too complicated with bujos or else I get super caught up with making my spreads super pretty and I'll get too anxious to use it and then forget about it.
You actually have to do it yourself Its a blank journal, which means you have to draw out all the spreads yourself. oop.
Planners (the ones you buy!)
I've only truly used two store-bought planners in life. Moleskin and Passion planner!:
Moleskin
I used a moleskin for my sophomore year of high school because the super expensive moleskins finally went on sale so I copped one. It did its job, but there wasn't anything really special to it that blew me away. It was very dependable, like an earthbender.
Passion planner (passion planner spread)
This is another planner I bought on sale! I loved this one, it helped me organize my SUPER hectic junior year. I took on a load of 4 AP's, a sport, and two clubs to run! There were many options for organization and I really liked the different time slots. I would buy this again but I really like my current planning tools at the moment.
Pros:
Pre-made spreads Its much easier to concentrate and do work with a store bought planner because you wont have to take the extra time to draw out spreads and trackers! These were great during my hectic years where I didn't really want to use up 30 minutes to make an organized spread. Especially the Passion planner because it was organized as a timetable! I wrote the exact hours I would be available to do things, and scheduling was much easier. (Also the dates are already written down...saves lots of headache)
Cons:
$$$ A really nice planner with a bunch of different spreads can be quite pricey depending on where you are looking. You don't exactly need a fancy-shmancy planner, but most of the ones i've actually used on the daily ended up being more expensive ones :/ If you look out for sales though you might find a good deal! Knowing my cheap-ass I got both my Passion planner and Moleskin on sale :)
Online Planning
This is what I have been currently using under quarantine! I currently use the app notion for LITERALLY EVERYTHING. This thing literally sorts my life out. I started using notion due to Rowena Tsai's video and @noodledesks master post! This was a life saver now that everything is online. I can put teacher website links and online course schedules on both my computer and my phone! The only problem is that it is a somewhat complicated interface due to its customizability. Nonetheless, I think it a wonderful plat form.
Rowena Tsai’s video
@noodledesk ‘s Post
Pros:
Online platform If you are currently a student, most of you work will be online I assume, which means links, videos, PDF's, and other documents will be your coursework! Well where will you organize all those things? ONLINE duhhhh...
Customizable If you like how customizable a bujo is? You can do the same with Notion! I have tons of pages, databases, and task lists which organize my life. If you look into it more you will see that the app supports tons of different templates and have some pre-made ones too. I usually just take a premade template and customize it to fit my needs.
Can connect to other devices Notion also has an app! It can be found on both the apple store and google play store. This means even on the go you can make changes to your planner.
Cons:
Can be hard to navigate If you aren't very tech-friendly this might not be the one for you. When I first started using notion I just used the templates on their own, and I still was confused for how to use them because I am not very tech-friendly for my age (which is quite bad). But after a couple hours of re-organizing and watching youtube videos I got the hang of it. Now its super easy.
I’ll upload images of my planners in another post attached to this one because I don’t know how to format them nicely on this post lol!)
