Get Organized for College: Introduction for Parents

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from The Marble Jar channel and today's video is a specific introductory video for parents to my Get Organized for College 7-part video series. 

I'm guessing if you are watching this video, you are about to send your kid off to college.  Or perhaps you have one already in college who could use some organizational tools.  I created this 7-week program to make sure my kids have the tools they needed to handle the information, scheduling, tasks, life skills, and assignments that they would be facing in college.  When I went off to college, I was a bit anxiety ridden since I had graduated from a small-town, country school and felt like I was going to get eaten alive if I didn't pull myself together.  During high school, I was not very organized, I left things to the last minute, and I frequently lost or forgot important things.  That summer before college, my dad bought me a book called "File Don't Pile" and he paid me $100 to read it and implement the system it contained.  $100 was a lot of money in 1989 AND the anxiety that I felt lit a fire under me.  That $100 may have changed my life.  It was the first step in my quest to really create organizational systems that worked for my brain so that I wasn't constantly late, unprepared, and behind. 

With this series, I'm hoping to do this same thing for my kids.  Things are WAY more complicated now and the variety of organizational apps, products, and methods has also increased exponentially.   A simple book probably wouldn't cut it anymore.  Instead, I want them to learn through thinking about their own preferences and trying out different options until they found tools and systems that worked best for them.  Each week in this series, they will learn about and implement a system for a certain facet of organization:
  • Week 1 - Communication - which will deal with staying on top of emails, texts, and communications from any platform
  • Week 2 - Calendar - this week deals with choosing a calendar system to handle events and scheduling
  • Week 3 - Task Management - this is all about how to handle tasks for the day, recurring tasks, and future tasks
  • Week 4 - Organizing Paper & Notes  - this week discusses systems for filing paper, personal notes, and notes for classes
  • Week 5 - Productivity Hacks - this week goes over ways to manage time, be more efficient, and get things done
  • Week 6 - Habits & Self Care - this week discusses how to build good habits, start the day off right, and focus on self care and mental health wellness
  • Week 7 - Planning for Classes & Big Projects - this final week covers how to plan for classes once a professor posts the syllabus and how to plan for big projects and papers

Like my dad did, I also plan to put some money behind this project.  Each week, I plan to give each kid $20 if they institute the system for the week and $20 if they have kept up the systems from the weeks prior.  That will come to a sizable chunk of change, but I'll consider it money well spent if it launches their thinking about how to handle all of these elements of organization and if it requires that they put in place systems that work BEFORE they get blasted with a fire hose of tasks, responsibilities, and college distractions!

I'd love to hear how you use this and whether you and your student find it to be useful.  Comments are always appreciated and thanks for watching!

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