College Supply Organizer: Using JanSport Digital Pouch

Of course I'm doing another College related post, but hey going to College consumes 85% of my life. This semester, being the first semester I'm at a actual University I will be spending a lot of time there. So I need to make sure I have everything I'll need through out the day. 

This is the JanSport Digital Pouch or as the tag says "Pixel Pouch Gryrbbitsylvd" online as "Pixel Accessory Pouch". I bought mine at Academy for $14.99 online at Jansport.com its $18.
This is the front side

This is the back side with a zipper pocket. 

The inside comes with three stretch mesh pockets, a mesh zipper pocket, expandable pocket, and pen pocket in the center. 

This is everything I hope to get in it. 

1. My ear plugs that came with my iPhone 6 in an cool case.

2. Different sizes of post it notes.

3. A mini stapler

4. Paper clips (I ended up only using the big paper clip. 

5. iPad charger

6. My Livescribe 3 Smartpen Pro Edition which you can look at here. I'll be doing a review over this soon. Although I will point out because I'll be taking most of my notes with this pen, the other pens I have are limited. 

7. A flash drive from my community college I went to.

8. I have the Sharpie Clear View Highlighters, you can get here.

I have a regular sharpie.

Pilot G-2 Retractable Gel-Ink Pens, I couldn't find the ones with the cool design but these are the same type. 

And last, my Zebra Pen, this is the BEST pen. It writes amazing. You can get it here. 

9. I have Bic Whiteout Tape 

10. My Zebra Pencil, lead, and a Pentel Clic Eraser. 

Here it is full of everything. I didn't put the black Pilot pen or the regular paper clips.
I found I didn't need them. But everything fits pretty well.

The side pocket holds my highlighters, pen, pencil, and eraser. 

This is with everything in it and zipped up. Its a little bulky but it holds everything I'll need for supplies. 

So how do you organize or carry your school supplies? 

Leave any questions you may have...

Thanks! 

Preparing For a New Semester Of School

Being on vacation from work, and having a break off school. I still have a lot to do before I'm ready for the new Fall 2015 semester at college.

So here are the TOP things I always do to prepare for a new semester....

1. Clean out the computer
- I delete things I don't need anymore
- put documents in the right folders
- get everything organized to begin a new school year

2. Still living at my parents house, I always deep clean my room. I sweep, mop, and dust. I go through my closet, desk, dresser, vanity, and old drawers. I love cleaning so this really does help me get everything in place. I also clean my bathroom and car out to just get rid of clutter.

3. My favorite thing is to go and look through all my old school supplies. To figure out what I need for the new semester. Lucky this year I only had to buy new highlighters ( I really wanted the see through ones), one pencil (for my planner), one notebook (50 cents I plan on using it for studying), white out tape (the liquid wasn't doing the job). While everything else I already had including a file system, pens, folders, binders and loose leaf paper (I have a 2 inch binder FILLED with paper).

However, this year my mom bought me a Livescribe 3 Smartpen Pro Edition so I plan on using this to take notes. I'll do a review on this once I have started using it.

4. I clean all my bedding and jackets. I clean my bedding every two weeks, so the Sunday before I start school I'll clean my bedding again. I wash all my jackets because they've been hanging round my house through the summer. During Christmas break I wash them again before the Spring semester starts.

5. I pamper myself, I get a facial, my nails done, a haircut, go shopping for new clothes. I do this because what women doesn't love pampering themselves.

6. I get my planner cute, clean, and ready for the Fall. I make sure I've wrote in all the dates from the school calendar. Then for the Plum Paper Planner I have I write in my classes. I also make a note card of my class schedule with the room number.

What do you do to get ready for a new semester of school?

How I Organize my Desk For Studying

I've been in college for four years, I've changed my desk around plenty of times. But I've FINALLY got it the way I want it.

So I have a before picture of my desk which I like to call a "Organized Mess"...

Nothing really had a place, I just put stuff where ever it fit. I bought the Desk at Office Max for around $250 I believe. 

Now.... 

I put everything in its own little place. I'm a very organized person, so to get the place I spend about 85% of my time during school clean was a must. I used stuff I had laying around in storage to help get it to work for me. 

1. My Wall Calendar..

I bought this at Hobby Lobby for around $11 (with a 40% off coupon). 

I write down all my due dates for school, doctors appointments, days I work. I then cross it off when I'm done. I will eventually take those clips and write down #1, #2 for things I need to do in what order. 

Heres the calendar filled out with my school things. 

2. Shelf organization.. 

This is my favorite thing about this desk.

The first shelf (to the left)... has all my bill, college, and a small random notebooks and folders. 

The middle one has my binder I plan on using for this Fall, along with a clipboard. 

Last one has my wedding binder, an my 5 subject notebook I use to write random stuff in. 

The top shelf has receipts, one of my books for the Fall, and my iPad. The bottom shelf has all my school books for this Fall. 

I also have an assignment book where I keep track of all my homework (bottom right corner). 

3. The drawer on this desk is honestly a POS. But I really don't open it a lot so I deal with it. 

4. My Filofax sit here so their easy to grab. The small one is my Budget/ Finance keeper. The big red one is well my everyday planner. 

I also have a coaster, so my drinks don't cause a ring on the desk. 

5. Since I don't use my drawer a lot I have this desk organized (I got it from Target). I put my everyday things here; scissors, pens, pencils, glue, post-its, stapler, tape, highlighters, etc. Then I have my post it organizer I got from Big Lots. I also have my Staedtler Pens, which I must say, are the BEST pens ever. Kind of in the picture I have my cuticle oil and hand lotion. 

6. This index card holder of course holds all my index cards. I study with them, so I have a TON! Also bought from Target. 

7. The desk has four of these shelves, the top one pictured has all my Filofax/planner items in it. Such as stickers, my sticker maker, all my avery labels, etc. The bottom one (sorry I thought I had a better picture) has all my extra notebooks and folders, along with my paper cutter, and hole punch. The drawers I bought from Michaels a long time ago. The two shelves not picture hold my DVD player and child books. 

I love having this new desk I can spread all my homework out, and I just feel more productive with everything organized. 

If you have any questions, just ask. 

Five Ways I Take Notes in College

Starting my fourth year of college (I graduated with two associates degrees in May 2015) I've wrote notes in almost every way possible.

The way I write notes really depends on the class (duh). 

In my Social Psychology class, I wrote in 4 different ways until I figured out what was best. 

Types of Lecture I've had:

1. Goes along with Powerpoint

2. Just rambles 

3. Writes random stuff all over the white boards

4. Makes you write your own book notes then goes over stuff later in class. 

Hand Writing:

1. I bought a Cornell note book (here) when on sale these are the best deal. Original price is around $8. I use the same pen when I write in this notebook, because it writes fine and is really smooth (here is the type of pen).

I have a key when I write notes: 

Definitions have bullet points in the cue column

and arrows in the note section.

They are also highlighted yellowed if on a test, then blue if on final.

Powerful words have a circle around them 

~ Are the studies done

< Title of Powerpoint Page > 

I only do this for the Cornell System. However I plan on doing this, this coming Fall for notes also. 

 * I don't always use the summary part 

2. I also take notes by hand on normal college rule.. these notes are following a powerpoint so for this...

1. I < title the powerpoint slide> if the same slide goes on for three more slides, I don't rewrite it I just keep going under that titles. 

2. I number each slide and skip a line between each slide. 

3. I use different colored pens for definition, studies, and then just the rest of the writing. 

Having so much paper left over I've decided to do this type of note taking for my Fall 2015 semester. I will only change, one thing, I plan on incorporating the Key I use for the Cornell system.

3. Note taking from the BOOK....

I write my own notes going along with the book, leaving space in-between. Then when I get in class I write in whatever the Professor talks about. 

                    

Using Technology 

1.  I have an iPad that I use to follow along with Powerpoint during class. I only take my Macbook Air when I have projects. I hardly ever type my notes, you learn better if you have to physically write them.

I took these notes because I missed a day, lucky another student in the class had the notes and emailed them to me and I just added on to his.

* I recommend becoming friends or hope that a person who types notes will share them with you if you miss a day. 

I used my iPad when I took online classes, I haven't used my iPad for note in along time. But I might pick it up again this semester. 

Extra Way:

I once had a Professor who gave us the Powerpoint online. We had so many Powerpoint's (I filled a 3 inch ring binder FULL with all of them) I just decided to print them out in outline format and wrote my notes in. I ONLY used this for this one class. 

Then during my education class the Chapters were so short, my Professor printed out the Powerpoint's and gave them to use to write in whatever we wanted. 

Over all the type of note style I do depends. I usually go through each type of note taking, during the first week till I figure out which one will work best. Although, the Fall 2015 semester I plan on sticking with hand written while using my Key. I find I learn best using this method. 

Hope you enjoyed. Leave your own advice in the comments. 

My Review on the GoodNotes App

My amazing boyfriend finance got me a iPad Air 32GB Wi-Fi for my birthday. You can get it here.

I was sooo excited because I knew I could use it for school and it would be a lot easier then hauling around my skinny Macbook Air. 

However now on to the review I bought the GoodNotes app for around $3.99. I looked at a lot of other ones and this is just the one I decided would be best for me. 

So what can you do with the GoodNotes app 

1. The main thing (which i'm sure you can already guess) I write all my notes for my online class on this app. 

This is what the front of the Chapter looks like. The design in one you can pick from. 

This is what you can do instead of swiping through each page. You get an over view of them all. 

This is the "home" where all your notebooks are located

There are parts that are really important and I don't feel the need to write it down. So I simply open a text box and type away. 

This is what it looks like if you use a stylus pen. You can also upload google pictures and add them in.
These notes are from Child Psychology. 

I took a picture of the notes I had taken on paper and just uploaded them in to there own notebook in the app. 

My favorite part about this app is you can change the type of paper you want. You can have lined, graph, music, plan type of paper. I use it for math I'll draw my graphs, print them out and turn the graphs in with my homework. 

You can also had shapes, you just draw one and it forms into a straight one. 

We also have vocabulary for my math class, however; it's not required for the assignments but we still have to learn it for the test. So what I do it take pictures of the questions and just write the answer in using my stylus pen. Again why write a bunch of stuff when you can take a picture.

This is what it looks like when you are writing (the easier way).

The blue box shows up at the bottom. This is where you write at. 

This is helpful because it doesn't pick up your hand when you write (at least how I write). 

A blue box will also pop up once you write to the middle and what you do is just start writing in the blue box and it will take you to the beginning, end, or a new line of the page. It basically prevents you from having to move the blue box around to keep writing. 

Something else I do is I will take pictures of the homework I'm about to turn in. I do this because I turned in 3 math assignments and needed them to study with for the test that was two days later. So I obviously wasn't going to get those assignments back, but his worked just as well.

I will also keep pictures of work outs I want to do and I keep track of my plan of study. I recently changed my major and needed somewhere to keep track of all my classes.

   

It's a great app! I use it everyday for homework, exercising, and to watch some Netflix.

This is where technology has its advantages.