Xatal

Every year before school would start, I would inevitably make a hurried run to Target to pick up all of the school supplies that I needed for the upcoming year. Binders, dividers, sometimes a new backpack, you name it. Each year, I had the same goal in my mind: “This year, I’ll be organized.”

I’ve always been that kid with the messy backpack. You could open it up and see tons of papers crammed in here and there, not at all organized. My binders and folders would be empty and unused, wasting space and adding to the burden on my shoulders.

Again last year, I decided I wanted to be a bit more organized, but I also decided that I didn’t want to fail yet again. It was time to decide what was going wrong and how I could finally be happy with my schemes. I took some time to figure out why what I was doing wasn’t working for me.

The first thing I realized was that when I normally took notes, it would be on a random sheet of binder paper. After a lecture, I wouldn’t want to go through the hassle of tucking it neatly into a binder, so I would just cram it into my backpack where it would get lost and forgotten.

I figured what was holding me back from being organized with my notes was the hassle of organizing it. I countered this by just buying spiral notebooks. That way, all my notes for each class would be together, and organizing them would be as simple as continuing where I left off.

I then realized that I never used my binders either. All they did was take up valuable space in my backpack, so those had to go. I didn’t buy a single binder last year. I did encounter some trouble deciding where to put worksheets that I knew I would need in the immediate future, but that was quickly solved when I realized I could just put the papers inside the notebook and/or textbook for the class. This led to the problem of having slightly crinkled paper edges, but that was worth it for me.

As for older papers, those were either put loose in my backpack or promptly thrown away. I tried to keep up on papers that I really no longer needed.

In fact, I managed to trim down what I was carrying so much that I no longer brought a backpack to most of my classes. I would simply put a pencil in my pocket and tuck my book and/or notebook under my arm and go to class. By stopping at my locker between classes, my dream of not lugging around a huge backpack finally came true.

How this applies to you

So why am I telling you this? Your organization style is undoubtedly different than mine.

Well, my point is that you should not waste time on organization. Instead of thinking of ‘organization’ as being perfectly neat (all your papers in a binder, neatly labelled, etc), think about what you expect from organization. If you constantly try to be organized, but fail yearly like I did, then it’s time to think of why that doesn’t work for you.

Unfortunately, some teachers will ask you to turn in a perfectly organized binder to be graded in an effort to teach you how to be organized. As far as I’m concerned, at the high school level that’s completely unnecessary, but you’ll have to bear with it and suck it up, I’m afraid. But that doesn’t mean you can’t be in control of the rest of your classes.

So the next time you’re wondering what school supplies to get, think about what you’ll actually use and what you’d like to use. Stop wasting time on trying to be perfectly organized and start spending time on being happy with how you keep your things.

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