Ditching My Agenda For My Phone Alarm
Using your phone’s alarm to keep track throughout the day will make your academic life so much easier. It will keep you on-task and on-time. 
As a grad student, there are assignments after assignments and emails after emails. On top of that, don’t forget that your everyday life tasks are still there.
Grade school through undergrad, I lived by my agenda. For grad school here at Newhouse, it was no-brainer that I would do the same. Since that was my usual, I made sure to put that on my back-to-school supply list.
When I usually go agenda shopping, I like to get one that is pleasing to the eye. So, for the start of this semester I got a blue (my favorite color) medium-sized agenda. I like to get very technical with my agenda. Besides the color, it has to be the size of an average journal; anything bigger will put me in the mindset of a textbook. On the inside of the agenda it has to have a good amount of space for each date for me to write the information needed for that day. If it doesn’t meet that criteria then I will have to pass.
Why I had to let my agenda go
Classes had begun, and the work started to pick up. Each time a professor would let the class know about an important due date, like usual, I would pull out my agenda. But when the day was finished and I got to my housing, I would completely forget about my agenda.
I would just use my memory to get started on assignments that were announced in class. It wasn’t until I started remembering assignments last minute that I knew this wasn’t going to work.
After getting an agenda that met my specific needs, something was not pulling me to it for this semester. Don’t get me wrong, agendas are great, but for some reason I wasn’t checking in it to see important dates. So, I had to think of the next best step.
I had already tried the power of memory and I knew that wouldn’t be my best option.
Then I thought to myself, “why not my iPhone alarm?”, I use it for everything else. My iPhone alarm kept me on track with my everyday tasks outside of school. So, I decided to give it a try.
Warning: If you do give this a try, you will have so many alarms, but each one will be worth it.
I like to set my alarm days ahead before the actual day that the assignment is due. With that I have no excuse to start last minute, or even worse miss the assignment deadline. My alarm has saved me many times when I thought I was in the clear of an assignment, and then it goes off and lets me know I have something to complete. When making your alarms throughout the day, be sure to not set them during a class period. The last thing you want is for the loud, never ending alarm to sound off.
I even use it with emails. With a lot of emails coming through you might not always have the chance to go through them right then and there. But some emails may have a deadline for a response, and that’s where another alarm will come in handy.
If you have an Android – even a flip phone – that’s no problem. The alarm clock will be somewhere on there.
