—— how I organised myself for uni

*disclaimer* I study English literature so my organisation all depends around taking lecture and literature seminar notes, reading and formulating essays

I used these black hardback notebooks for lecture and seminar notes, to do lists, key info etc and I use 1 to 2 per academic year. In the first few pages I would write all the key info for each module I was taking (lecturer names censored for privacy).

+ MODULE & ASSESMENT INFO
As I said I did this in the first few pages so I could always refer back to it. This info was provided by lecturers to my online module pages. I put in when my class times were, and where, who was giving them, all the essays and exams I was expected to

complete and how many words they were, and I also included all of the assessment objectives and criteria that my lecturers would mark me on so I could make sure I was actively learning these throughout the year.

Here’s an example of my layout from third year:

+ LECTURE AND SEMINAR NOTES

For the first 2 years I did all rough note taking in these notebooks & other random bits of paper, then wrote them up neatly in my black journal, researching things I didn’t understand and elaborating etc. I this method too time consuming for 3rd year

In 3rd year I wrote all my notes from lectures & seminars in my black journal immediately. If I had a question or didn’t understand a concept I would ask in the seminar. I did this bc I developed my note taking skills, as u can see here, clear & colour coded:

+ TO DO LISTS & ESSAY PLANS
between my lecture notes I would make a list of things I needed to read & make notes on for classes next week, or assignments I needed to do. As soon as I was assigned an essay I would write down all the key info again, the title I chose and brainstorm

+ PRIMARY READING
all of the essential texts I read I would try to write my thoughts & feelings on in my Reading Journal. I highly recommend doing this as a literature student bc it’s really important to reflect on what you read. I used a different colour from my main journals.

+ SECONDARY READING
When I was reading criticism as most of it was from sources online it was so much more time effective to copy and paste relevant quotes into a word document and type up my thoughts on how they applied to my essay or module on my laptop.

Notes on Barthes for my essay on racism in literature. I forgot to put the reference for this one but usually I would have that underneath the title & source link. Barthes is quoted in black, I also put the page number and my thoughts are colour coded in red to distinguish them.

+ FOLDERS AND MODULE PACKS
For my first two years of my degree we were provided with module packs of printed out secondary reading for us to read and make notes on and discuss. Other hand outs I hole punched put in a folder and divided by each module (see photos).

okay I think that’s it ! the end :)