<p>It's senior year. This is the year I will finally get organized, guyz!</p>
<p>In the past I've done:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Individual notebooks for each class; Failed because I kept filling up my notebooks REALLY fast and ended up having to get new notebooks every month. </p></li>
<li><p>1 binder for each class; Failed because it got too cumbersome and annoying to carry all those binders home every night. </p></li>
<li><p>1 notebook for all classes; lol it was junior year and i was just done ok </p></li>
</ol>
<p>What should I do for senior year? I'm thinking 1 huge binder for all classes. Good / bad idea?</p>
<p>Last year I had a multipurpose folder and one giant binder with a lot of paper in it. (But my school has block scheduling, so you only take four classes at a time.)</p>
<p>Halcyonheather</p>
<p>And that worked out well, I take it?</p>
<p>I was thinking of doing large dividers for each class and smaller dividers for each unit with a multipurpose folder. I’m afraid this is going to heavy though. I’m taking 7 academic classes, and we don’t have a block schedule sadly.</p>
<p>
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<p>Pretty much, but most of my classes weren’t especially note-heavy. And if the information was in the textbook anyway, I’d just sit there and not take notes.</p>
<p>If you don’t throw all your papers into your bag without organizing them, you’re doing school wrong.</p>
<p>I’m always iffy on binders…I feel that the amount of effort organizing them is superfluous and they’ve never worked well for me.</p>
<p>But then again, notebooks haven’t either, because I’m super obsessive-compulsive and every stroke of my handwriting has to look perfect to me otherwise I get a headache and start stressing out. (But really…I want to pull my hair out or cry.)</p>
<p>I do like folders, though, and I think I’m going to get one for each class and use looseleaf for notes, then staple them together at the end of each unit. Hopefully none of my teachers next year are anal about the supplies we use for their class.</p>
<p>By the way, does anyone know what a MARBLE composition notebook is? Can it be colorful, or does it have to be the black/white “marble” pattern?</p>
<p>“I do like folders, though, and I think I’m going to get one for each class and use looseleaf for notes, then staple them together at the end of each unit. Hopefully none of my teachers next year are anal about the supplies we use for their class.”</p>
<p>This is actually a REALLY good idea and would take care of the ridiculously heavy binder issue. </p>
<p>In regards to your question, if they didn’t specify “black marble notebook” I would assume that you’re free to pick any color. Personally I enjoyed shading in the black & white ones with my highlighters when I was supposed to be taking notes!</p>
<p>No but seriously those notebooks are uber annoying because you can’t rip out pages without destroying the entire thing.</p>
<p>I use a use 2 binders with 2 subjects in each. The way it goes is 4 tabs that double as folders (where I put notes, homework, graded work, etc), loose leaf paper, & then a notebook (which I never use but I still always get one) & then it repeats for the second subject. It works pretty good for me.</p>
<p>I feel like an “everything binder” is risky because if you were to lose it, you’ll essentially lose the bulk of all your work, just like that. If you’re able to keep track of it, then I’m sure that’ll work out fine.</p>
<p>What I did was I bought 1.5 inch binders for every class, and I figured out pretty early on what classes had binder checks and what classes didn’t, along with whether or not a binder was actually even helpful for that class. For instance, AP English Lang - all of our work was on Google Drive, so my binder was empty, despite my teacher asking us to get a binder. We literally had no paper, whatsoever. However, in Trig, we took notes daily and had worksheets and packets, that I kept very well organized in my binder so I could study for tests. By say, October, I was really only carrying around a math binder coupled with an “everything folder” for simple worksheets from my other classes. I thought this worked well for me and I considered myself pretty organized all in all.</p>
<p>I would say you definitely need individual binders for math and science. I combined my math and science binder this year, and after 2 quarters, my binder was overflowing. I combined history and English together this year, and it worked out fine since there were less notes and papers.</p>
<p>I just finished freshmen year. I tried different things every time I ran out of room. I recommend a binder for whatever class you get a lot of loose papers from. Then you can just hole-punch them and put them in chronological order. I liked being able to put all my labs in order for physics class. Was easier to keep all my data organized for when I’d hand it in.</p>
<p>Otherwise, I recommend getting two or three-subject notebooks and just tearing out the dividers. At least do this for classes you know you’ll get a lot of work from. Then get an accordian folder for any hand outs.</p>
<p>I just have one binder with sections for each of my classes. I’m thinking switching over to two binders though. One binder will be for my morning classes and one binder will be for my afternoon classes.</p>
<p>I’m infamously known for getting through 6 classes a day with a 0.5" Avery binder. I organize obsessively, and empty it out on a daily basis, and it works surprisingly well. I have never left a paper that I actually needed at home. </p>
<p>I would highly suggest it, because everything seems much less overwhelming and it’s really easy to carry around as well.</p>
<p>@staratzenith1997 - Show me your dark magic ways. LOL, but seriously, God, .5 inch binder for all of your classes? A .5 binder only worked for my Latin class, which had minimal notes and hand outs. Wouldn’t you like to be able to carry a larger binder and not have to empty it out as frequently? I mean, your system is pretty cool.</p>
<p>If all of those systems failed for you, it’d probably be wise to avoid all the super-organized one-per-class approaches and stick to the approaches that require an “everything” folder/binder. </p>
<p>Personally, I like having two folders for assignments/handouts/notes (one for each day - my school has Green Days and White Days with 4 different classes on each day) and a third folder with a ton of loose leaf notebook paper. I’m lefty, so I hate writing in notebooks because the spiral binding is in the way. I like this system because it doesn’t require a lot of effort to organize my things, whereas having 7 binders with tons of divider requires a lot of effort and I inevitably fail. My new approach is simple… you shove everything in the same folder. I do have to clean the folders out every couple weeks or so but it’s much easier than managing 8 binders with 4 or 5 tabs each!</p>
<p>@staratzenith1997: yes! someone else in the world who does this! And the same avery binder…that’s a little disconcerting. Haha I started doing this last year and I loved it. I’ve been able to switch down to a cute little backpack that weighs a fraction of what my old one did and I actually keep better track of assignments now. A larger binder is tempting, but it gets messy and heavy fast. But, as he/she pointed out, organization is key.</p>
<p>I am not organized at all so I perfer notebooks b/c with a binder I usually just fold the paper and say I’ll organize it later and never do and just lose them. Last year I just ended up using my WHAP text book as a binder b/c I just hated carrying the binder around. Srsly the day the teacher was gonna pick it up I had to spend like 10 minutes taking out all the papers. SO I prefer multi subject notebooks since it dosn’t give me the option of having my stuff all over the place and use the folders that come in them to store all the worksheets and stuff the teacher gives out.</p>
<p>@aristocrat - Glad I could be of help! Yep, I hate binders too.</p>
<p>“No but seriously those notebooks are uber annoying because you can’t rip out pages without destroying the entire thing.”</p>
<p>I KNOW, I HATE THAT! Why can’t teachers just let us use spiral notebooks?</p>
<p>Kind of a trivial question (and off topic, considering this is a binder thread) but what writing utensils do you all use to do homework/take notes? I’ve tried buying pens at the store, but I hate all of them. I like the ones you get for free at hotels because they don’t leave “ink balls”.</p>
<p>Any recommendations for someone like me, who is super obsessive over what her handwriting looks like? I’ve tried the RSVP pens that everyone raves about, but I actually hate them. They’re only slightly better than the Paper Mate Inkjoy clicky pens, in my opinion.</p>