Congratulations! It’s the end of the semester, and you have survived the last week of madness. Now it’s time to sleep for days and watch another two seasons of Friends. While it’s extremely tempting to waste away the week after finals– I haven’t left my lovely bed before eleven o’clock the past two days–and do absolutely nothing, here are five must do things for the week after finals.
1. Organize your desk. After two all-nighters, a mountain of microwavable food, and a pile of unorganized study guides, desks are looking rather messy. While it’s easy to head home and leave the desks to themselves, show them a bit of love. Clean out the drawers that have accumulated pointless trinkets and old receipts. Toss the unneeded end-of-term dorm handouts. Dust things off and leave it ready for a new semester!
2. Start selling back your textbooks. It’s easy to put this off, because no one wants to deal with long lines and receipts; however, the sooner they’re sold, the sooner you have money to buy new expensive textbooks. Isn’t it an awful, overpriced cycle of madness?
3. Rewrite or type your notes. Okay, okay… I know this isn’t what most college students want to hear, but it’s important to keep notes that you’ll need for future classes and exit exams. In my case, this means keeping all the notes from my British Lit survey class and all my English upper-levels. Keeping notes isn’t the problem– organizing them is a different story. I spent two days typing up my notes from the semester, but the end result is worth it in the end. Easier studying in the future!
4. Throw away unneeded notes/study guides/flashcards. This is a great way to celebrate, yes? Take those notes and handouts from classes you’ll never see again and toss ’em out. I kept everything my freshman year, so biology and university life continued to haunt my crates of textbooks until this semester. Thankfully, they’re now gone, and it’s easier to work when you don’t have old homework cropping up out of nowhere.
5. Organize your planner. Flip forward a month and plan out your first week of the spring semester. Note when and where your classes are, record any work or internship hours, and highlight any start-of-semester meetings. This is a great way to push aside the finals-fever and to start getting excited about a new year.
How do you get organized the week after finals?
Words On My Page 
This is great! Not in school anymore but these are great. And helpful!
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Thank you for dropping by! I’m so glad you enjoyed the post.
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Great tips. I’m done with school, but I still need to organize my desk and my planner .
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Thank you, Shann Eva! I’m convinced that organizing desks and planners is a never ending chore.
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Sierra! Thank you for your tips! I know you intended well with the shiny circles on the webpage. Would you please consider taking them off as they make it hard to read and concentrate? 🙂
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I’m so glad you enjoyed the post, Lis. And thank you for your suggestion!
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I only started renting textbooks around my sophomore year, but it made returning them soooo much easier! All I had to do was pop them in a pre-posted envelope and I got some money back, without attempting to sell them at the school bookstore. Awesome tips!
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Yes! Renting textbooks is such a wonderful thing. I rented most all of my textbooks freshman year, and it saved me a ton of money and eliminated a bunch of hassle.
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I wish I would have seen this before! Love this!
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Better late than never! I actually have a few class notes that I need to finish typing…. ooooops. 😛
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This is great! What I usually do is clean/organise as I go along. However, the only thing I do at the end of each semester is put all my handouts in my ‘handouts folder’ for that particular semester. If there is information I need to retrieve for a current course that relates to a course I’d previously done I can easily go to the folder and find the information I need.
I know this is not directly related to the post, but for receipts I have an Excel workbook that I log every single thing I spend. I keep every single receipt and at the end of the month I staple the receipts. This helps me to keep track of everything I spend more accurately. I hope this helps 🙂
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That Excel spreadsheet is an awesome idea! I’ve been trying forever to figure out how to keep good spending records–I’ll have to try out your system. Thanks so much for dropping by!
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No problem! I’m happy I could help. For the spreadsheet, the title for each column (in order) is date, company, item, and amount. At the bottom I have the total for each month. At the end of each semester I have the period total (eg. September – December 2015).
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How is it some of you are renting text books and getting money back? Our bookstore keeps the cash and you lose all of that money you paid just to rent the book.
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