Organizationally Challenged DD Going to CC

[goldberry]

DD16 will be taking two classes at community college in the fall.  She is ADD and has trouble with organization.

 

When she was in middle school I would give her a daily schedule to check off.  When she started high school I gave her a weekly schedule and she would organize herself daily.  Last year, she had one class outside that I would just leave a space for her to write down what she needed to get done there.  But, that teacher (a fellow homeschooler) was not really strict with dates/etc).  She still with this system would often lose papers, leave papers laying all over the place, etc.

 

Part of my goal is getting her to find and use a system that works for her that she can stick with.  She recently started using Google Keep on her phone to make lists/etc, and she likes that.  (She has tried a few other list making/reminder apps and didn't stick with any of them.)

 

First, are there any good apps that are good specifically for college, keeping track of assignments and deadlines?  I like the idea of electronic, so that she can set reminders.  But are there any advantages to paper?

 

Two, I would like to sit down with her before the classes start and talk to her about what her organizing system should accomplish.  What should I cover with her?

 

THANKS!

[regentrude]

The advantage of paper is that you can have a big overview over your commitments for a week or month. This may be helpful to a visual person. I recommend that she combine her phone app with a big whiteboard or desk calendar.

 

What her system should accomplish is get her to do all assignments on time. There will be pre-lecture assignments for reading, after-lecture homework, and possibly long term projects. She should put her exams on the schedule and block out time for studying in the preceding week (not just the preceding day).

She may need to set a reminder to check her email or the Learning Management System or the course website (whatever the instructors use) on a daily basis to watch for announcements, updates, additional information.

 

ETA: Something where an app does not help: keeping track of papers. You might want to sit down with her and think about a system that makes it easy for her to keep, and find, papers of different kinds. There will be notes from class, handouts, homework. Some students prefer multi-section notebooks, others like binders with tabs. It has been my observation that there is a strong correlation between student's success and organization; the successful students are able to find a specific place in their notes, keep track of handouts, can locate their homework assignments. There are many options, and she should decide on something she is comfortable with and stick to it. You might need to assist her in the first few weeks.

[OneStepAtATime]

Agree with regentrude.  

 

Have you or she read Smart but Scattered and ADD Friendly Ways to Organize Your Life?  Both might help a bit.

 

Good luck! 

[Pegasus]

The best you can do is expose her to different organizational methods and let her find what works best for her.  I tried to push the written planner method on my DD when she started taking dual enrollment courses at the CC but she didn't end up using it except for the month-at-a-glance page where she would write in all the assignments for all her courses in tiny writing. Yikes! But it worked for her and that's the point, I guess.

 

As an aside, the first course I had DD take was called "College Success" and they covered things like how to study, how to research, how to make presentations, how to keep your coursework organized, how to seek help from the tutoring center, how to take tests at the testing center. etc.  It was a great introduction to college level courses.  Does your DD's school have anything like that?

[AngieW in Texas]

Make sure that scans her syllabus into the computer so that it can always be accessed. Taking a picture of any pages of the syllabus that give dates/deadlines on her phone is also a good idea.

 

Be sure that she accesses blackboard or whatever online board her cc uses regularly. Most of my dd's teachers have been careful to put everything on blackboard, but she did have a few technologically challenged teachers who didn't do anything on blackboard.