Organize
Organize Your Life
Successful professionals spend time and effort on organizing their work and activities. This may not seem like "real work," but it is essential. When you are organized, your work is better, faster and more efficient.
Email
Use Gmail's built-in tools for organizing email. Avoid having an inbox cluttered with old emails, where you cannot easily find relevant messages.
Calendar
Use a personal, portable calendar. This can be digital, like Google Calendar (available through your Canisius Google account) or a paper pocket calendar. Record appointments, events you will attend, holidays, and regular classtimes.
Many students also like duplicating important events on a big, quick-reference wall calendar, posted in a place where they frequently work.
Folders
Save and organize essential files, be they paper or digital, in folders. Traditional three-ring binders are great for paper handouts or copies of your work, and spiral-bound notebooks work fine for notes.
Computers (and phones) can arrange files into digital folders, whether on your hard drive or in cloud storage (such as OneDrive or Google Drive.)
Avoid having a massive pile of disorganized paper, or a computer desktop or downloads folder with hundreds of files.
Keep Copies
D2L course spaces usually close to students after a semester's end. You may no longer use your Canisius Google Drive or OneDrive after you graduate. You might lose a USB drive. A hard drive might fail.
So keep multiple copies of all assignments, syllabi, and any other important files in several places. This is a basic backup strategy: have three places you store files, in two different forms of storage (online and local drive) and one outside your house or dorm room (such as online.) Spend a few minutes each week or month to add new files to these locations.
The above example shows Microsoft OneDrive, but Google Drive and other cloud storage services allow you to store and organize files in folders. So does Windows and Mac OS, on your computer's hard drive.