Midterms, Finals, and Due Dates

One HUGE challenge for a lot of kids in college is getting their work done and studying.  In high school, studying and getting your work done on time was barely an issue to the average student. But in most high schools, you went to the same classes every day and saw the same teachers every day. There was no forgetting in high school, there wasn’t a party every weekend that you just had to go to, and there weren’t huge lectures halls where you blended into the crowd. You simply sat in a room and heard what you had to do before the next day. They made sure you were reminded. In college, your class might not even require attendance, which tempts most of us to just stay in bed and sleep for another 55 minutes on Friday morning. But in high school, you were not exhausted on Friday mornings because you partied too hard on Thursday nights. You may have had dinner with your parents and did your homework. In high school, tests didn’t have chapters 1-6 and required readings 1&2. It was just one chapter, maybe two of American History, which you were just studying in class every day for a month and probably only need 30 minutes of actual studying to get an A on the exam. I had a lot of ideas about how to study in college, but nothing really worked for me. This was definitely not high school.

One thing I tried, was taking pictures of every due date I saw in class. That became too unorganized because I took too many pictures. Another was writing things on my hands, but that is messy. Ink is hard to get off. My hands would get sweaty and the writing would smear. I also tried writing them down in a journal everyday, but then I would forget to bring the journal and write it on a random piece of paper. Then I would lose that random piece of paper. Even setting reminders in my phone didn’t work. Sometimes they would not go off, and some classes did not allow phones so I would forget to add a date. Nothing seemed to work for me. Overall I was just a mess my first semester freshman year. I could not find a way to constantly remind myself of what was due and when to start studying for my tests.  So here is what I started doing. Every time I went on my laptop, I would check Blackboard, My UAlbany Email, and WebAssign (depending if I was taking a math or not). It sounds dumb, but it constantly showed me how long I had to do certain assignments and how many assignments I had at one time. It worked for me, until now.

Blackboard is an online technology used to facilitate classroom management 
and communication. Many professors share their syllabi, assignments and grades 
using this tool.

I finally discovered something that will help me never forget a due date or an exam that is not as annoying as checking my laptop all the time. The Blackboard App. For freshman and most of sophomore year, I didn’t even fully understand what The Blackboard App could do for us that our professors don’t. If you download The Blackboard App on your smartphone it can send you updates of every time your professor changes something in the course. These updates can range anywhere from test dates posted or syllabus updates to graded work or class discussion
boards. The Blackboard App reminds you of everything, it is like having a portable teacher. I wish I knew this app existed much sooner than February of my sophomore year. I check my phone all the time. It does almost everything in life for me why not also have it remind me of my school work have? Now when I check my phone when I wake up it tells me what to do. If a class in canceled it will tell me before I step off my Quad. This app changed my life and helped me overcome this terrible challenge.

About the Author:

Kate E. 
Class of 2018 
Major: Communication 
Minor: Journalism and Philosophy
Spring 2016 Blog Theme: 
Metamorphosis

Please Note: The views of our student bloggers do not necessarily reflect the views of the UAlbany Advisement Services Center. These are their stories –  their voices.