Organization is simple. And yet, it’s very difficult. For college students, organization is never under a bigger spotlight than at the end of the semester. This is the time when students need to start preparing for finals, and that often entails finding documents, work, notes, and other resources that have been used all semester.
For students who have kept a tidy organizational system all semester, this will be easy. They can dig out the documents they need or find the files on their computer and start preparing for their final exams. For students who haven’t been on top of it, this will be more of a challenge.
We always encourage students to have a long term storage component within their organizational system. This is a place where students can stash away important documents, lecture slides, diagrams, study guides, etc. that have used throughout the semester. If a student has this, the task of prioritizing materials and preparing for finals becomes much easier.
For the students who don’t have the system in place, we recommend they set aside some time a few weeks before final exams (so right now) and go through all the documents from the semester, both online and physical. The students should focus on identifying the most important information that will allow for the most targeted studying and learning. This is a small step that we find students skip and it leads to an ineffective use of time and worse grades. This will also give a student ample time to obtain resources that they cannot find their own copy of.
This simple step can make a big difference in a student’s ability to prepare and initiate for final exams.