I’ve seen a lot of articles discussing sociologist Janice McCabe’s novel Connecting in College: How Friendship Networks Matter for Academic and Social Success. McCabe divides people into three types of networks, so I decided to chart my own network. This is what I learned about my friendship network and how I structure my relationships. McCabe’s Conclusions McCabe asked 67 students at a midwest university to name their friends, and then connected them to create networks for every individual. She found that there were three basic types of networks. Tight-knitters–Individuals with one cohesive friendships. She found that this was most common with African-American and Latino students. She also found that it was very difficult…
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Meal Planning for the College Student
When I moved out of the dorms, I also moved away from the dining halls. Once a place of great anxiety for me, the dining halls and my unlimited meal plan have now become a fond memory of when I could walk in, grab a sugar cookie and a slice of pizza, and leave. In the last 6 months, I have learned the full deficit of my cooking skills so this month I’m going to try meal planning. Turns Out I Can’t Cook When I moved off campus, I didn’t consider how having to cook would affect my life. As quite the Sunday morning pancake flipper, I figured my breakfast prowess…
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Beginner’s Guide to Calligraphy and Hand Lettering
Since I started Bullet Journaling, I’ve seen hand lettering and calligraphy everywhere on Instagram and Pinterest. My handwriting isn’t a work of art by any stretch of the imagination, so I figured I’d leave that part of Bullet Journaling to the professionals. However, for Christmas my mom got me a calligraphy set for me to experiment with, and this week with midterms finally over, I had a chance to give it a try! Experimenting with Hand Lettering I first tried hand lettering in my first bullet journal back in August. I played with different styles, without any prior planning. It turned out pretty well for a first try, especially using…
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Leuchtturm 1917 Notebook Review
Over the last 6 (!) months of bullet journaling, I’ve heard the whole “you just need a notebook and a pen” story a thousand times. It still seemed like everybody was using the same notebook, the Leuchtturm 1917 in A5. Even the Official Bullet Journal notebook is made by Leuchtturm, so I figured there must be some reason for it. After using it for a whole month, here is how it changed my Bullet Journaling experience. Before the Leuchtturm 1917 I started bullet journaling using a lined Class Act Stationary notebook my friend Becca got for me. I used it through my fall quarter, and it served me well. However, it…
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Time Tracking in my Bullet Journal
As we move into midterm season at my school, there isn’t a ton of time to waste, but somehow I’ve found the day getting away from me. Since this seems to be a running theme for me every quarter, I’ve been looking for ways to improve my time management skills. Inspired by Kara from Boho Berry, I started including a Time Log in my Daily Spreads. I’d been hearing about time tracking as a way to increase productivity for years. There are all these apps both for your phone and computer that can track your online time. I tried using Toggl for my computer last year, but I didn’t use…
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Rosana Reviews: Positive Podcasts
On my quest to be healthy, I’ve found myself exercising (mostly running) for too many hours without a good playlist. Streaming playlists hasn’t been working to fill the gap in my workouts, and the music on my phone isn’t cutting it. So instead I’ve stumbled into the world of podcasts! The first season of Serial kept me going through many runs my senior year of high school, but this time I didn’t want a story. I found that what worked best for my workouts were longer podcasts, generally between 40 and 75 minutes, because then I didn’t have to worry about finding another episode. The best part of podcasts is that…
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Making an Exercise Plan for the Ex-Athlete
I dreaded the running part of my cross-country practices. After a long day at school, the last thing I wanted to do was stick around until 5pm to run. And if it weren’t for my amazing teammates, I never would have stuck with it. Now, I miss everything about those practices. The part of sports I took for granted for so many years was that I never had to schedule my own exercise. In the fall, I had practice or a meet every day for cross-country. In the winter, there were indoor soccer games and practices to keep me moving, which went outdoors once the snow melted. It was so easy…
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School Year Resolutions
Happy 2017! It’s been years since I’ve made New Years Resolutions, but when I started the 2016-2017 school year I decided it was time to make some goals for the year. Now that the first quarter of school is done, here is how I made them, how (badly) they held up, and the changes I’m making for the next quarter to accomplish them by the end of the school year.
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Fall Review: The Bullet Journal
At the end of every quarter, I review my organization system’s effectiveness in an attempt to always keep improving. During Fall Quarter, I adopted Bullet Journaling, a DIY Planning System. This is how it worked. Bullet Journaling Just before the beginning of this school year, I implemented an organizational system called Bullet Journaling. It is a DIY organization system that in its most simple form only requires a pen and a notebook. It combines to-do lists with future planning, in a format that allows complete personalization. This system can work for everyone, but this how I used it to track my school work, exercise, social commitments, and activities. I used a notebook…
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And so it goes
Hello world, My name is Rosana, and I am a sophomore in college in Chicago, IL. Over the last 20 years of school, I have tried every organization system out there. I read organization books, and even made my own planner in hopes of making a system that would fit all my needs. Last year, I moved from my small town in Massachusetts to go to college in the city, and it was a whole new world of schoolwork, activities, and friends. Suddenly, the systems I had used before were not enough to handle the life that college was throwing at me. I recently settled on Bullet Journalling, a system which…
