Hello everyone! My semester had just ended last week and I can finally update more on my blog. For this blog post, I will be sharing how my second semester was way organized than my first one. It's all because all Notion! I shared about Notion before on my Instagram stories if you noticed but I decided to make a whole blog-post here. This is going to be a lengthy post so watch out!
Dividing this into 4 categories:
1) What is Notion?
2) What I Use Notion for?
3) Disclaimers
4) How to Use Notion.
WHAT IS NOTION?
Notion is a platform where you are able to create your own workspace. Simple to say it is like a blank paper, you can create pages using the available features into your own layouts and templates as you wish! If you are clueless on how to make templates, there are ready-made templates available whenever you create a new page. You're free to use them directly or modify them to suit your taste. For more, just head to Youtube for tutorials!
Notion also enables you to upload files like PDFs, images, links, etc. You can also connect your Google Drive account and embed the Drive links into your pages.
Notion has 4 plans - Free, Personal, Team and Enterprise. When you sign up on Notion, you will be given the free plan first. As usual, there are some limitations when you use the free plan. Exploring the settings, I discovered that we are able to change into Personal plan (that initially requires you to pay the subscription) for FREE! Yes, free! All you need to do is to change the email you signed up with into your student's email provided by your Uni/school.
As you can see, the Personal plan is personal. You won't be able to add your friends or team members to edit in your workspace. If it's not that important, feel free to convert your plan into Personal plan!
To sign up:
Go to Notion website and sign up using your own email first
After signing up, go to Settings & Members and find Upgrade
Scroll down the page until you see Students & Educators section and click on the Get Free Education Plan
Notion will ask you to change your email into the Uni/school email
Next, they will ask about your Uni/school information so just fill them in correctly!
It might take a while for it to verify your new email address but you'll get it on the same day eventually!
Once you've gotten the email, you're now subscribed to Personal plan for free!
WHAT I USE NOTION FOR?
I mainly use Notion to organize my semester and keep files online other than on Google Drive. My workspace includes an assessment plan, a master schedule, active recalls and pages for each course. Here's an overview of all the pages in my workspace!
i. ASSESSMENT PLAN
The assessment plan is basically a simple table of mark contribution for all courses I'm taking in the semester. I made this list because it's easier for me to check how much a task contributes to my final CGPA. I don't have to waste time searching for the PDF my lecturers uploaded in the Uni website!
The table includes courses, type of assessments, percentage of contribution!
ii. MASTER SCHEDULE
The master schedule is a table/list of all assessments I need to complete or events I need to attend throughout the semester. It includes tick boxes, courses, assessments, dates/deadlines, task mode and additional notes section. It has a reminder too but I don't think it works quite well but I have yet to discover how it really works lol.
iii. ACTIVE RECALL
Active Recall is an underrated method of studying. You 'study' by testing yourself to memorize the contents in between certain time intervals. I won't be talking much about this but if you want to know more, check out Ali Abdaal's Youtube videos on active recalls! This page I attached here is actually an active recall schedule. This way I will always be alert when to recall topics I've learned!
iv. PAGES FOR EACH COURSE
For each course, I made separate pages to fill contents only related to that course. Each page has instructor information, learning schedule and a course content table.
The learning schedule is an embed. Download the PDF provided by your lecturers and add it to your page!
The table of course contents is where you list down the chapters you've learned and you can attach lecture notes or your study notes too! Note that it's better to attach files in PDF format rather than word/doc format. This table can also lead to new pages where you can make active recall for each chapter! Just move your mouse to the chapter names, click on the "Open as page" and it'll lead you into a new blank page with the chapter name as the title.
Here's an example of an active recall template I use. With this page done, you can go back to the Active Recall schedule, mention this page by typing '@' followed by the chapter's name. Later when you want to start revising, simply click on the mentioned page and you will be directed to the active recall page!
When you click on the mentioned page on the schedule, it will come out like this!
Click on the underlined/mentioned title and it'll lead you to the page above.
DISCLAIMERS
The template I use in my workspace is actually a combination of 2 studygrammers I follow. Both have their own Youtube videos on how to use Notion with their own way! I couldn't stick to one style because I love how practical both templates are so I merged them together.
If you want to check out more on how to use Notion, you can check their Youtube videos here (@janicestudies) and here (@studycollab).
As I mentioned, the merged template was made from both of them. If you want to duplicate the their templates, you can find the links in their description box under their YT videos respectively! As for mine, I made a page specifically for downloadables here. I included links for my monthly and weekly planners too!
HOW TO USE NOTION?
Easy-peasy! All you have to do:
Sign up as I directed in the earlier (don't forget about changing your email!) and stay signed in.
Click here and it will direct you to the template I made.
Duplicate the template into your workspace - the button is on the top right of the screen
Explore the template! I added some descriptions here and there in the pages in case I didn't mention about them here.
And that is all I have about Notion! You can not only organize about school but you can do tonnes of things on Notion! It's super fun when you get the hang of it. Just look up for Notion related videos on Youtube to find out more.
Good luck!
thank you for sharing this nan!!! 🥺🧡 im gonna start using this for my new semester :>