How to begin spring semester the right way

Hello, this is Seth from sethperler.com. I’m glad you’re here. I hope you are having an awesome end to your year. It’s just about 2015.

I’m sending out this video today to tell you a little bit about how I help students enter back into the second semester of the school year. I’m going to give you a couple of quick ideas, and you may want to watch this again in about a week when you’re about to go back.

So here’s what I recommend.

Hopefully, if you’re the student, what you did over break is bring everything home—every book, every paper, every folder, everything from your desk, everything from your locker. You brought it all home.

What you want to do with that stuff is pull it all out and throw it across a table, a desk, or even the living room floor. I don’t care—just get it all out.

You want to prepare yourself to go back into school in about a week, and you want to be ready. If school is not your strength—if organization, time management, and getting homework in are not your strengths—you want to make sure you don’t start the semester already swimming upstream.

The way you avoid that is by starting as strong as possible.

Here’s what that looks like:

First, pull everything out.

Second, go through every single piece of paper you have. Throw away or recycle everything you possibly can that you know you don’t need.

If you are not sure whether you will need something, put it in a box at home called “archive.” If you are sentimental about something—like a paper or test you’re proud of—it also goes into the archive.

So there are two things that go into the archive:

• Sentimental items

• Things you might possibly need later

Everything else—if you can let it go, get rid of it.

You are going to have thousands of papers throughout your schooling. It sounds crazy, but it adds up. So get rid of what you don’t need and give yourself a fresh, clean slate for the new semester.

Next, pull out all your folders. If your folders are destroyed—which usually happens by late October or November—repair them with duct tape or throw them away and get new ones.

Label every folder clearly, front and back, with the subject and your name. I prefer cheap, color-coded folders that match composition notebooks.

For example, red for math with a matching red composition notebook. This helps avoid one common problem: students mixing notes from different subjects in the wrong notebook. Color-coding reduces confusion so your brain doesn’t have to think about it.

If you are using a three-ring binder and it doesn’t work for you (which is true for most students), switch to a simple folder system instead.

Set up a “Q folder” for anything important you are still working on—you can refer to my other video on that if needed.

Next, pull out your planner.

If you hate planners (which most students do), try to let that go for a moment and grab a simple monthly planner. I prefer ones with only January, February, March, April, and May—just the school months.

Use a large 8.5 x 11 planner if possible. Go through and map out the entire semester:

• Mark every day off

• Block out holidays

• Write down tests and projects

• Add birthdays and important events

Get everything in before school starts so your planner is ready to use on day one.

Next, pull out your books.

Use sticky notes to label chapters. If you are on Chapter 7 in algebra, mark it. Then mark Chapter 8, Chapter 9, and so on.

If you have reading assignments or upcoming material, flag those sections too. This makes it easier to find information quickly and prepares your mind for what is coming.

If you know where you are in your textbooks, look ahead at upcoming chapters so you can build a small mental foundation before the teacher covers them in class. That helps you stay ahead and understand more easily.

Finally:

• Put everything back into your backpack

• Clean out all unnecessary papers

• Set up your system for the new semester

You should now be ready for a strong semester—one where you are not constantly swimming upstream, but instead ready to take things on and learn effectively.

I hope you’re doing awesome. I hope you can let go of everything from the previous year that you want to release, so you can create space for everything you want in the new one.

Be well.