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10xF
Last updated 1/27/2025.
I started with just writing assignments and things down in those spiral bound planners they hand out at the beginning of the school year. For notes and papers I used to carry around binders for each class. Binders are kind of bulky, but I always hated regular notebooks for classes since you can't reorder the pages, and you can't insert any new ones like handouts either. What, are you just supposed to carry those around in a messy folder or something? Or worse, jam them in between the notebook pages or have them crumpled up somewhere loose in your backpack, never to be seen again. With binders you can hole punch pretty much anything you want to and put it in there tidy and in any order.
In college I started looking at electronic options to get rid of all the paper and be a little more efficient. I wanted to start doing that in high school too, but since teachers would give you a hard time for using phones or computers of any kind during school hours it didn't really work then.
My first try at an electronic planner was just writing everything I had to do in a random Google Doc. That worked for a semester or two but then I decided to make the planner into a Google Sheet where I could put every assignment into its own row with columns for due date, class, category, etc. I added some cool stuff like sheets for my class schedule and professor office hours, and another sheet for the entire 4-year plan. Later I also added areas to write down big project deadlines so they stood out from the other assignments and so I could break them down into smaller things.
For some reason at the time I thought it was a good idea to track every single assignment in the entire semester, I guess because a lot of classes give you a rough schedule in the syllabus. It still turned out to be pretty dumb since deadlines and assignments change, so you have to constantly spend time updating the list. Plus, opening your todo list and seeing hundreds of things in there is pretty overwhelming even if they're not all due right now. Eventually I gave up on that and only entered things into the sheet as they came in.
Later I decided to get rid of the spreadsheet entirely and try something else. The sheet was pretty cool but I guess it still felt a little overwhelming even without entering everything there. I didn't have a good way to only look at things due today or sort by class, and it just felt a little cluttered. Plus, no reminders or phone widgets or anything like that. These days I just use the built-in Apple Reminders app on my phone. There's no Linux or Windows support outside of the iCloud website, but the cross-platform todo apps I found are all just running in useless Electron web containers anyway. TickTick is good if you're fine with those, but you might as well just save some disk space and use the web version in a regular browser.
For notes I've been using my iPad 6th generation with the Apple Pencil and OneNote. The built in Apple Notes was pretty buggy and unstable with the Apple Pencil when I used it, so I started using OneNote since my school uses Office 365 already. To me even after using it for a while it still doesn't match the feel of pen and paper. I'm not a huge fan of this setup, but at least you don't have to carry around a bunch of papers and you can find your notes easier. If I didn't already have the iPad I probably would have just stuck with pen and paper though, and scanned the notes in. I've heard the reMarkable tablet is pretty good, but I haven't tried it.
There's also the Obsidian app which is kind of like having your own wikipedia. It's a Markdown notes editor that lets you link between notes and do some other cool things. I haven't used it a ton except for one class but it's nice if you like the wiki format. It's a lot easier than setting up an entire MediaWiki or making a huge website with all the notes written in HTML to do the same thing. Though if you're reading this page, you'd probably enjoy that anyway.
I use Mozilla Thunderbird for e-mail and calendars. It's a great program for keeping all your e-mail accounts in one place, which in college there's at least two to keep track of (personal and school e-mail).
Finally, Anki for memorization. It's a good open-source program that lets you create virtual "decks" of flash cards to go through. You can set it up so that it reviews flash cards at good intervals to improve your memorization of the subjects. I used it for a few memorization-heavy classes and also for studying for my driving test!
Academic Anecdotes I - Organization
When I got to college I ended up trying a lot of new things to get organized, so here's a rundown of basically everything I used through school.I started with just writing assignments and things down in those spiral bound planners they hand out at the beginning of the school year. For notes and papers I used to carry around binders for each class. Binders are kind of bulky, but I always hated regular notebooks for classes since you can't reorder the pages, and you can't insert any new ones like handouts either. What, are you just supposed to carry those around in a messy folder or something? Or worse, jam them in between the notebook pages or have them crumpled up somewhere loose in your backpack, never to be seen again. With binders you can hole punch pretty much anything you want to and put it in there tidy and in any order.
In college I started looking at electronic options to get rid of all the paper and be a little more efficient. I wanted to start doing that in high school too, but since teachers would give you a hard time for using phones or computers of any kind during school hours it didn't really work then.
My first try at an electronic planner was just writing everything I had to do in a random Google Doc. That worked for a semester or two but then I decided to make the planner into a Google Sheet where I could put every assignment into its own row with columns for due date, class, category, etc. I added some cool stuff like sheets for my class schedule and professor office hours, and another sheet for the entire 4-year plan. Later I also added areas to write down big project deadlines so they stood out from the other assignments and so I could break them down into smaller things.
For some reason at the time I thought it was a good idea to track every single assignment in the entire semester, I guess because a lot of classes give you a rough schedule in the syllabus. It still turned out to be pretty dumb since deadlines and assignments change, so you have to constantly spend time updating the list. Plus, opening your todo list and seeing hundreds of things in there is pretty overwhelming even if they're not all due right now. Eventually I gave up on that and only entered things into the sheet as they came in.
Later I decided to get rid of the spreadsheet entirely and try something else. The sheet was pretty cool but I guess it still felt a little overwhelming even without entering everything there. I didn't have a good way to only look at things due today or sort by class, and it just felt a little cluttered. Plus, no reminders or phone widgets or anything like that. These days I just use the built-in Apple Reminders app on my phone. There's no Linux or Windows support outside of the iCloud website, but the cross-platform todo apps I found are all just running in useless Electron web containers anyway. TickTick is good if you're fine with those, but you might as well just save some disk space and use the web version in a regular browser.
For notes I've been using my iPad 6th generation with the Apple Pencil and OneNote. The built in Apple Notes was pretty buggy and unstable with the Apple Pencil when I used it, so I started using OneNote since my school uses Office 365 already. To me even after using it for a while it still doesn't match the feel of pen and paper. I'm not a huge fan of this setup, but at least you don't have to carry around a bunch of papers and you can find your notes easier. If I didn't already have the iPad I probably would have just stuck with pen and paper though, and scanned the notes in. I've heard the reMarkable tablet is pretty good, but I haven't tried it.
There's also the Obsidian app which is kind of like having your own wikipedia. It's a Markdown notes editor that lets you link between notes and do some other cool things. I haven't used it a ton except for one class but it's nice if you like the wiki format. It's a lot easier than setting up an entire MediaWiki or making a huge website with all the notes written in HTML to do the same thing. Though if you're reading this page, you'd probably enjoy that anyway.
I use Mozilla Thunderbird for e-mail and calendars. It's a great program for keeping all your e-mail accounts in one place, which in college there's at least two to keep track of (personal and school e-mail).
Finally, Anki for memorization. It's a good open-source program that lets you create virtual "decks" of flash cards to go through. You can set it up so that it reviews flash cards at good intervals to improve your memorization of the subjects. I used it for a few memorization-heavy classes and also for studying for my driving test!