It’s hard to resist the excitement of a new semester, yet the crippling stress of assignments and grades and exams always shows up much faster than expected.
School can always be stressful, but by preparing well for your semester, you can really make sure that you are ready for anything that comes your way.
Preparing digitally, understanding your syllabi, collecting your course materials, and planning out your time will make your semester more manageable and possibly — dare I say — fun!
Preparing Digitally
The easiest thing to start with is your computer! For a new semester, it’s best to start with a clean slate, so move all your documents from the previous semester to an external hard drive or a cloud storage account.
But, it’s important that you don’t delete these files! I’m normally a huge advocate for getting rid of things that you don’t use anymore, but this is an exception.
Quick storytime. During my senior year, I was really struggling to fit in one of my final writing-intensive gen eds. On the first day of the class, the professor described the requirements for the credit, and it matched with a class I had taken sophomore year! So, you guessed it: I found all my old documents, brought them to the Dean, explained why the course counted as my writing gen ed, and was able to drop the class I was in!
Moral of the Story: Never delete your work or your syllabi.
Anyways, now that your computer is looking nice and clean, make a folder for each class. This will keep all your assignments organized from the very beginning!
Understanding Your Syllabi
Before your classes start, make sure that you’re familiar with your syllabi. You should save them in the folders that you made for each class, and you can print them if you want.
Make sure to read over each syllabus, making note of classroom expectations and materials you might need. You don’t need to have the whole thing memorized, since you’ll probably go over it on the first day of class, but familiarize yourself with how the course works.
Next, either bust out your monthly planner or print out a basic monthly calendar for the semester. Assign a color for each class and write down all the due dates for the semester. This is really helpful because you won’t have to reference 6 syllabi every time you want to see what’s due this week. You can also see if you end up with multiple exams on the same day!
Keep your eyes peeled to see if there are any assignments or readings due on the first day! Classes usually don’t assign work before the course starts, but it can happen, so make sure to check for that!
Finally, I highly recommend setting up a grade tracker. This is great to help you make sure that you are staying on track, and it lets you double-check in case a professor makes a mistake in their grade book! You can use an app (I use this one) or you can set up a spreadsheet on Google Sheets or Excel.
Collecting Your Course Materials
Make sure you know what materials you need for each class. Make a list of all the things you need (notebooks, folders, textbooks, etc.) and buy the things that you don’t already have. Especially, if you’re on a tighter budget.
For textbooks, know which ones are for each class, but don’t buy them until day one. Sometimes the textbooks are completely optional, which can save you a lot of money.
You can also ask your professors if you can buy an older edition of the textbook! Usually, the older editions are almost exactly the same with a few different practice problems, except they’re half the price. 🤑
Also, see if you can rent your textbooks on Amazon! I used to do this with almost all of my textbooks because it was waaaayyy cheaper than buying them from the campus bookstore.
Planning Out Your Time
I actually have a really detailed post about how to make a timetable for your semester, so if you want a step-by-step walkthrough, check out that post here!
Planning out your week ahead of time will really make the beginning of the semester feel more manageable. Chose times to study for each class, including when you’ll eat meals and go to club meetings.
It’s okay if it’s not perfect at first! Spend the first week revising your study schedule. Did you hate trying to memorize chemistry reactions at 8AM? Change it! Were you starving an hour before your scheduled lunch break? Change it! By the end of the first week, your schedule will be much more realistic.
During the second week of class, be really picky to see if your schedule actually works. Ideally, you’ll be using this schedule for the rest of the semester, so it should work like clockwork. Since you revised it during the first week, it should work pretty well, but if things don’t feel right change them quickly.
Also, know when you’re doing too much. If you feel like your classes are more work than you expected or you know that you’re going to be overwhelmed with the coursework, drop a class! It’s better if you drop it than to suffer the whole semester.
Conclusion
By fully preparing yourself for the upcoming semester, you’ll feel more confident, get better grades, and have a less stressful semester!
If you liked this post, check out one of my other popular guides, How to Study for Effectively for College Science Courses, to help you develop great study skills for the upcoming semester!
