In high school, teachers, guidance counselors, and parents were usually available to constantly remind you when deadlines were approaching. In college, this is not the same case. Along with newfound independence in many other facets of your life, in college, you are responsible for keeping up with your own deadlines. Sometimes, professors don’t even announce the deadlines out loud, but instead, expect you to read about them in your syllabus.
Because of this expectation, here are a few extremely helpful ways to ensure that you are always on top of your deadlines.
The most helpful technique, in this day and age, is to utilize the calendars on your phone and computer. Both phones and computers have very useful calendar functions that often go unused. You can even set notifications so that you’ll be sent a reminder when a deadline is coming up, which is very helpful. When you receive your syllabus at the beginning of each class, go through the important dates listed and enter them into your phone’s calendar right off the bat. Let’s be real, you most likely spend more time on your phone than you’d like to admit, so if you enter important dates and notifications on your phone’s calendar, you won’t miss them!
Likewise, if you appreciate having a visual and doing things by hands, having a physical agenda might be helpful for you. That way, you’ll have the satisfaction of crossing off items you’ve already completed. Another useful technique is to have a whiteboard in your room and to list all of your classes on the whiteboard. Underneath each class, you can put the upcoming deadlines (by week or month) and then erase them every time you’ve completed one.
If you follow these tips, you’re guaranteed not to be one of the students that walk in on a due date and says, “wait that was due today?!”