© Jose Fernando Carli

How many of you are just approaching the end of the academic year? I’ve finished a couple of weeks ago, and many students are starting to break up for summer in the coming weeks. You’re all imagining it already, the great (or not so great) weather, the BBQs, the parties and proms. With all these temptations, it’s easy to put off those essential tasks that make summer more relaxing and getting back to work next year a lot easier to stomach. Although it might seem like a pain now, you’ll be thankful for it later. The list below should cover the basics.

Things to Do

Return all textbooks borrowed from School

The last thing you want to deal with over summer is letters and invoices for textbooks that you’ve borrowed and should have returned. Do yourself a favor and return them to the right people after you’ve finished using them.

Cancel any subscriptions you’ll no longer need

Perhaps you’re dropping a subject next year and you’ve got a subscription to a journal related to it. Make sure you cancel these and save yourself a bit of cash!

Tidy your workspace

This exam period can be a stressful period and unfortunately, for many of us, with stress comes mess. Make sure your work area is tidy, filing systems sorted (see below) and that you could work at it if you needed to. The last thing you want is a messy workspace cluttering your home when it isn’t even being used.

Sort out filing systems

Get all of your notes organized now, making sure everything is ready for next year. This includes throwing out notes you really don’t need (remember, if re-sits are likely etc. – keep the notes) and making sure they are all in the correct places.

Sort out computer files

Almost the same as the above on sorting filing systems out; make sure your computer system is not neglected. Archive files that you aren’t going to need to refer to regularly and make sure you have a clear file structure in place. Now might also be time to do some computer maintenance you should have been doing.

And finally…

Enjoy summer

I’ve got 11 weeks off this summer, and I’m sure going to take a break after the stressful exam period has finished. For some tips on how to make summer worthwhile, see Maria’s post on “Summer Goals” and check out my post published next Tuesday entitled “Things to do during summer”.

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This list isn’t exhaustive, if you’ve got any other tips for things you do to wind down for summer, please share them in the comments section below.

Today is going to be a day filled with a lot of studying and not too much else. Here’s my schedule:

8am Wake up, shower, eat, check mailboxes (IRL and virtual), write in blog
9-10 Study for German final
10-11 Study for Geology final
11-12 Study for Russian final
12-1 Free BBQ at Bowman Park; Meet Melissa 12 in Hub Lobby
1-2 Study for Spanish final
2-3 Take a break!
3-4 German
4-5 Geology
5-6 Russian
6-7 Eat dinner
7-8 Take a break!
8-9 German
9-10 Geology
10pm Go to sleep (if tired; if not, 10-11 Russian)

Of course this can be modified if need be, but I find it easier to not procrastinate and to actually get this done if I plan it out and have it written down in my calendar.
How do you study?

It’s almost time to head back to school and a new semester means a fresh start. This new year, start off on the right foot by taking concrete steps toward two of your resolutions – getting organized and achieving more academically. Rather than wait until half the semester has passed you by, use this first week of school to get yourself prepared for the semester ahead. Here’s a list to help you get started.

The basics:

• Put away last semester’s material. There’s no impediment to a fresh start like tripping over last term’s books and notes every time you move toward your desk. Organize your old notes, assignments and handouts and store them in binders. This way, they’re out of your way but available for future reference. Move the books for last semester’s courses to the bottom of your bookshelf so you can devote the prime shelving space to those you need for this term.

• Clean your bedroom/dorm room. Once you have last term’s materials off the floor, get the rest of the place in order. A clean and organized environment will allow you to spend your time getting your assignments done, not searching for lost items.

• Set up your workspace. Now that the desk is clean, make sure it’s prepared. Take inventory of your school supplies and purchase whatever needs replacing. Check your course list and purchase any special tools you may need. (such as a calculator or sketchpad).

• Set up a reference point for your materials. If your class notes pile up in your book bag or on the floor, you’re not going to be reviewing them after classes or referring to them for your papers. Set up a system now and resolve to stick with it. I use magazine files and binders that have dividers labeled with the theme of each class. I prepare these binders as soon as I receive the class syllabus and store them on my bookshelf. On my desk, for easy reference, I have one magazine file for each class. (I use these from Ikea.) In each, I keep the notebook I use for that class, a folder with handouts and that week’s reading materials. At the end of each week, I move that week’s readings to the binder (those that are in paper copy) and print out the new ones. This way, I am never searching for my notebook five minutes before class starts.

• Print out a copy of your schedule for your bulletin board and planner.

• Buy the course books as well as any reference books you may need. Don’t wait until the last minute to do this, especially if you plan on buying them online because the delivery time may be lengthy.

• Set your goals for the semester. Don’t just drift aimlessly along. Set realistic goals now, and list concrete steps toward achieving those goals. Print out your goal sheet and hang it on your bulletin board or somewhere you will see it often. Plan rewards for achieving each step.

The extra mile:

• Get all of your reading assignments printed or photocopied and organized in your binder as soon as you get the syllabus. Getting it all done in one shot is a major time saver although it can rack up a lengthy photocopying bill. If you have the time and the money, however, it’s nice not to have to worry about the logistical side of keeping up with your classes. Glancing through the assignments will also give you a sense of where the course is moving and the types of things you will be expected to know.

• Do the first reading assignment for each class. Getting a head start will leave you a little wiggle room when the additional assignments start piling in, but for it to work, you need to keep it up.

• Plan your routine. Most people have more than just school in their lives. Planning a routine can help ensure that you allot sufficient time for your schoolwork but it also has the positive effect of leaving you time for other important activities, such as socializing. Also, making a habit of studying at the same time each day will enhance your productivity.

• Bookmark helpful websites in a separate folder for each class. There is an abundance of reference materials out there that can help with your classes: tutorials, exercises, research guides etc. Look for these things, as well as blogs by professors doing work in your field, current events on the topic, and anything else that you can find that you think might be useful to track or will help with the assignments throughout the semester.

Happy organizing!

The semester is winding down.  Before you pile everything up and forget about it for the break, here are a few things to clean up now (while you still remember what it all is). Read the rest of this entry »

This web 2.0 app is very unique. It is sort of a webOS/calendar/social networking mashup. The calendar is great, a nice and usable UI, and it is very snappy - not something you see in all web 2.0 apps. 30Boxes calendar looks to me like a matured project, as everything is very fluent and sensible. You can add events at the click of a mouse button, and have reminders sent to you via SMS (depending on if your provider is supported) or email. It also has many standard holidays marked in right off the bat such as Halloween, Christmas, New Years etc. Not only can you have reminders rent to you, but you can subscribe to your own or others’ calenders via RSS, iCal, Google homepage Yahoo and Bloglines. All in all, the calendar is a great app worth signing up for.

I woke up to check my feeds this morning, and noticed that Google has added a search box to their popular feed reading app Google Reader. If you have ever used Google Reader, you know that it is an exceptional online reader, but one of it’s biggest flaws was the lack of a built in search. The best work-around was to make a custom search engine in Google Co-op, but this had to be updated each time you subscribed to something new, plus you could not star/share searched items. The new integrated search does it perfectly, and even lets you search all, by subscription, or by folder.

The bad news is that any custom Google Reader userstyles will now not work. I found this out when I logged in to find my Google Reader OSX theme completely jumbled around. Guess I’ll just have to wait until the developer releases a new version.

I truly believe that we are right in the middle of the second dot-com boom, with web apps popping up all over the place, competing to be more useful to you, so that you will in turn use them. If you read blogs like TechCrunch, Appscout, or Lifehacker, your inbox is probably flooded with profiles and reviews of new apps, all promising to be the solution for some problem or another.

The thing is, a lot of the time you see a cool application that you just can’t use right now, and won’t be using for quite a while. But what do you do if you eventually do need it? This happens to me often, when I look at apps such as Freshbooks for invoicing, or Icebrrg for web form creation. A lot of these apps are the perfect solution for a problem. The thing is, you don’t have that problem right now, but you want to keep them for reference.

For this I suggest keeping your own “directory” of these apps that you may want for future reference. They don’t all have to be web apps either. Any web page that you want to keep for future reference, you should bookmark it and put it into your little directory of solutions. A really good way to do this is to open a new del.icio.us account solely for the purpose of bookmarking things for future reference. Install the delicious firebox extension, and then create a tagging system so you can categorize webpage for easy retrieval.

I currently have over 60 pages that I am keeping for future reference. Among them are sites such as Adobe Kuler, which is a color-scheme picking application. An amazing solution for color schemes, but I would still only use it the odd time when I needed a color scheme. Thus, I file it into delicious under “design”. To some, this may just be basic bookmarking. For me though, it is completely different. I have my browser bookmarks for quick access to frequently used web pages. I keep my swap file of web solutions separate, for anything and everything I think I might need in the future.

Google Apps is a useful service by Google which allows businesses and organizations with their own domain to use google service such as google mail, calendar, and start page. I spent a couple minutes moving Gearfire’s email accounts over to google, because I much prefer the gmail interface and storage over the generic-feeling webmail that comes from my host.

I was relaxing one night, and overheard my mom complaining to my dad about how their email address from the local ISP was not receiving messages properly, and had a 4MB attachment limit. So for my dad’s birthday, I registered a domain name for our family, and opened a Google Apps account with it. The advantages of gmail over the ISP’s email were enormous.

- Web interface to check email on the go
- 10MB file attachments
- Really good spam filtering
- Ability to check filtered spam to check for accidentally flagged messages
- Archiving of emails, so you never have to worry about a local system crash
- Easy search allows you to search your emails faster than a local folder hierarchy
- Personalized @domain.com address looks much better than @ISP.com
- You can choose any name @yourdomain and be sure it isn’t taken yet!

I pondered the possibility of everyone using Google Calendar, and sharing calendars with each other, but I don’t think my family is THAT open to embracing new technology yet. My mom doesn’t understand digital calendars, and my dad wouldn’t leave outlook for his life.

Now my current challenge is to get them using Thunderbird instead of Outlook Express…

Google Apps