I am exactly where I didn’t think I would be as we approach week six of the semester : Disorganized, ill-prepared, and shrouded under a stress cloud with a not so sunny forecast ahead. I know there are so many things we are all worried about right now, ranging from COVID-19 infections to family affairs and other unfathomable feats, but for the necessary compartmentalization and so I don’t end up writing a book, we are going to be discussing academic stress.
Stress is the thing I handle the poorest in life, and it usually stems from my lack of organizational skills. I am a list maker, a calendar lover, a reminder app enthusiast, my highlighters are my best friends and I am still consistently lost in a sea of deadlines and hazy instructions.
Generally, my to do lists and color-coded calendars are about as fun as they sound, as in not very, but I took a chance on a brainwashed sounding blogger who swore by something called bullet journaling.
Bullet journaling has been given many vague definitions in books, articles and postings, but can I be frank in defining it? It’s check lists and calendars drawn out in dotted line notebooks, and I love it.
Bullet journaling gives me creative freedom and is very therapeutic. I don’t have the patience to complete the ridiculously intricate adult coloring book patterns, and I get overwhelmed when I have a black and white calendar or plethora of unchecked boxes before me. Worst of all I have a hard time sitting still and doing anything that feels remotely unproductive (an unhealthy subject for another column). On that note, bullet journaling has become a happy little productive safe haven for my assignments, test dates and appointments.
I highly recommend this to anyone like me, who handles their stress super well. If you are a visual thinker and planner, bullet journals are a great way to be able to have a little fun with color and drawings when mapping out your day, week or even month.
I took a break from bullet journaling for the last bit of August and almost all of September. It. Has. Been. Awful. I just got back to it about a week ago, and I can already feel that haze clearing. The untamed sea of chaos in my life seems much more manageable when I look at my little notebook.
At risk of sounding like one of the brainwashed bloggers I took a chance on, I do want to clear up that this was not something I loved at first or was good at. It took a while to get used to jotting down everything and even longer for it to look pretty, but I made myself sit down and write or journal in it every day. After a week or two, I wished I had started sooner, and obviously I wish I hadn’t stopped. If I had stuck to it this last month, I might not be stuck in this flurry of stress I now find myself in.
A few helpful dos and don’ts for anyone interested in trying this out:
Do not begin this in marker, you will regret the amounts of rough drafts you are forced to throw out in shame.
Do start simple, most of my lists were hardly any different from how they looked before they had a special notebook to go in.
Do not try this if you hate journaling, list making or being creative, you will question the seemingly wastefulness and tediousness of doodling so much and using so many colors.
Do take it seriously, otherwise you won’t think of your goals or scheduled items as important to check in on.
Do not take it so seriously you forget that this was supposed to make you feel good looking at your pages. If looking at your lists and calendars in this journal doesn’t bring you joy or a sense of calm you should return to your calendar app.
Rebecca Prattcan be reached [email protected].