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This short module is intended to give you a quick
step by step guide for being able to set up your
planner and make it useful to you in keeping track
of your academic responsibilities.
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The first step in making your planner useful to you
is to write everything down that you have to do for
your courses in the planner. So STEP ONE is
getting out your planner, as well as all of your
course syllabi that your professors have provided.
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These may be in hardcopy form that they handed
out or you may have to pull up the syllabi online
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if that's the only way they provided them, but
either way you want to have access to all of them
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as you start moving into the next step.
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So STEP TWO is to get one of the syllabi for the
first course
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Open it up to the schedule of things that the
professor has provided and write down all of your
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assignments into your planner for that course for
the whole semester.
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This would include any readings that the
professor is requiring you to do
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quizzes, homework
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papers, end-of-term projects and exams.
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The the purpose here is, if you need to do it for
the course to be successful in the class
(especially graded assignments)
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you want to write it in your planner. And you're
putting in everything for the whole semester.
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STEP THREE is just to repeat STEP TWO for
each of your courses. So you're going through
one course
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at a time and writing down everything for the
semester into your schedule or into your planner.
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After you have everything in there, you might also
want to consider a color-coding system, because
color-
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coding can help make the planner even a little bit
more useful
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and efficient for you when you're opening it up
and looking at what you have going on. So
there's a couple different ways that you could
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color-code. One is you might want to color code
according to different types of assignments.
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So, for example, you can have differ color
highlighters and you highlight all your exams in
pink and all of your papers in blue and all of your
readings in green. This is just one way to be able
to open up your planner to a given week and see
quickly
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the level of work you have to do that
week...maybe how strenuous that week is going
to be.
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Another way to do is you could color code for
each class, so Biology could be blue,
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Math could be green, and so on. That's really just
a personal preference...whatever you think might
work for you.
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So, taking the time to do this, to go through these
four steps and really get everything down in your
planner really makes a difference in how the rest
of your semester is going to, if you want to be
able to track your assignments and manage your
time a little bit more effectively.
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There are a couple primary benefits to doing this.
One is that
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going through steps and using a planner really
does relieve some stress and anxiety throughout
the semester.
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Having to keep track of everything in your head or
constantly having to flip through all these different
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syllabi that your professors created, just to see
what's due and when...that can be really
stressful.
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But, if you have everything written down in your
planner, you have the nice benefit of just being
able to open it up and see right away what's
going on, what's due, and it really helps you keep
track of things. So the other main benefit
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of doing this is that you're less likely to let
something fall through the cracks or miss
something important. So for example,
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if you have everything in your planner, and you're
looking at your planner, you're less likely to forget
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a quiz that you have in class on a certain day.
You're less to not realize you have a five page
paper due until the night before it's due if you've
got your planner and you've been going through it
and keeping track of things.
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So, it really does help with your grades because
you're staying on top of your work much better.
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There are a few things you can do that will help
make using the planner a habit that really works
for you so that your planner is a tool that is
working for you.
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It's a good ideas as you start to get used to using
a planner to sit down in the evenings everyday
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and plan out what you want to do the next day.
Some students also like to have maybe a little bit
of a longer planning session on the weekends
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where they're looking at and making a plan for
their whole week.
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But if you're sitting down in the evening and you're
considering what you want to do the next day, you
can make a to do list and you've got your planner
right there all filled out so you can see what you
have to do for the next day for school. You can
also look ahead, and ideally that's what you
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should be doing. You can look ahead a week or
even two weeks to see what's coming up and
start early working on
some of those bigger things are going to be due
within the next couple weeks.
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So writing some sort of a to-do list in your planner
or in some form that you can
keep with you whether it's in your phone or some
students like to have a separate notebook. But,
you want to have a to-do list in some way
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that you've made a plan for yourself with mini
goals that you can accomplish over the next day
when you're doing your planning.
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You might also also consider chunking your
readings or breaking your textbook readings up
into small groups or small chunks and
scheduling them in your planner...making your
readings part of your to-do list so that you are
more likely to do them.
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In general, any major project, assignment, or
reading can be pretty overwhelming
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until you break it up into small pieces.
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So for example, if you have to read a chapter in
your textbook and it's 30 pages long
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that can be relatively unappealing to have to do all
that reading
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at one time. Plus it's usually not ideal for
retaining information to try to read all of that in one
sitting.
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So if you sit down and look at what you have to
get done for your readings and plan out doing just
a
few pages at a time and putting that on your to-do
list, you're going to be reading a little bit more
effectively.
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Another tip is always keep your planner with you
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and you want to have it available to use so that's
useful. If you've been in college classes you know
that
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classes you know that sometimes professors
make announcements
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that change the schedule they've given you in the
syllabi. So, if they do that and you have your
planner you can easily open up your planner
right away and write down the change that they've
made, so it doesn't become something that you
forget later.
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Also, sometimes professors just add
requirements or small tasks they want you to do
that aren't in the syllabi. If you have your planner
with you, you can write those down right away, so
that you don't forget them. The other thing is if
other types of appointments come up,
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like if you make an appointment at the health
center
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or if you are working with the group on a project
for a class and you guys set up a time to meet,
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you can put those kinds of things in your planner
as well.
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You can also use your phone to help supplement
all of these things. Sometimes for students
it's hard to remember to sit down and use the
planner everyday when they're not used to it
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so maybe you want to put an appointment in your
phone
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that'll pop up and remind you to look at your
planner and to do some planning for the next day.
You can also use your phone to keep track of
appointments as well. They're good because they
pop up with reminders, whereas
your paper planner can't do that for you. So,
really those are two tools that can work together
for you.
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This last piece is just an sample of how you can
take a larger assignment
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and break it up into smaller tasks, much like I
talked about breaking up textbook readings into
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smaller chunks...the same thing goes for really
big projects or papers.
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If you plan ahead and figure out how you can
break those bigger things down into small chunks
and write them in your planner on certain days
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and times, you're more likely to not procrastinate,
and your going to get things done and have a
better quality project or paper at the end.
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I won't through it here, but this gives you a good
idea of how you can take
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a 6 to 7 page paper
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that's due in a month and plan out what you're
going to do over the course of that month so that
you're not doing all of it in the last couple days
before it's due. This is something that you can do
for anything major,
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project or pape- wise in your classes, and it's
highly advisable.
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So again, these are just a few steps that you can
take to develop a planner and make it a habit that
will work for you
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As always, if you have any questions or want to
talk about any more strategies in
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more detail, you can contact us in the office of
Adaptive Services
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We're in Howard Hall 137.
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You can email us at adaptive@fgcu.edu, or you
can call us at (239) 590-7956.