The Organization Plans

Since arriving in Texas, while Bobby is at work, I've been preparing myself for this upcoming school year. I'm going to try my hardest to graduate next summer, but that means that this next year is going to be ROUGH! Most students don't take courses while writing their dissertation and I have to take six courses (three in the fall and three in the spring) in order to meet graduation requirements. Also, I will be teaching an online class that still needs to be set up, organized, and somewhat put together (thankfully it doesn't start until October so I still have some time to set it up - and hopefully it won't take up too much time once it's set up). In other words, if I hide or seem stressed or panicky this year, well, now you know why! :)

One of the courses I will be taking this fall is a research writing course. I think this will definitely help my research writing skills, however, by the looks of the syllabus that I got emailed last week, I think it's going to take up a lot of time and I think it's going to be a challenging course - but I also think it will keep me focused on my writing (this course has deadlines for the paper I need to write anyway so it will keep me on track). Bobby has been incredibly helpful and is keeping me grounded and whenever I start to get a little panicky, he's right there to remind me that when taken step by step, it will be fine!

Based on this course, with weekly reading assignments, annotations that are due, parts of the paper that will be due, etc., I realized I have got to figure out how to keep myself organized! One of the things I'm going to do is convert my second bedroom into an official office! Right now it's kind of a holding area for my stuff but next week it will become an official office so that I can work from home on my days off and not let myself be distracted by the tv or cooking or anything else in my apartment. By cleaning and organizing this space I'm also hoping it will force me to purge a lot of my stuff - which I need to do anyway before I (hopefully) move next summer and I need to do it so I can de-clutter my life (which will hopefully help keep my stress level low).

The second thing I realized is that I need to stay organized with my to do list. Last year I used a Word document to write down the list of things that I needed to accomplish. However, I was never satisfied with this method and I realized this week that I needed a much better method. I thought about using an Excel spreadsheet, however, I still wasn't certain this was the best method for me. Then Bobby found this wonderful app... 2DO!


It is wonderful! I can keep all of my courses and parts of my life separated by tabs, and then within each tab I can create to do lists, or checklists for projects. I also LOVE that it's animated so when you cross something off the list, a pencil actually crosses it off the list so you still get the great experience of crossing something off the to do list! And if you accidentally crossed it off, the eraser end of the pencil will erase the line.

So here's to what will hopefully be a stress free (or relatively stress free) year!!

Smile: Yay for an absolutely wonderful husband who is always there to help me see that I'm freaking out and stressing for no reason!! And yay for him being there to help me find just the app I was looking for!!