How I Use My Planner for Grad School

I did another poll on Twitter to see what you guys wanted to read this week because I’m super indecisive about what I’ve want to write about lately. A post on my planner won (shocking!) so that’s what we’re going to be talking about here today! If you are new here, you might not know that every year I write a comprehensive planner post and talk about my fav planners to use for work or school. Here is my post from 2017, if you want to check it out.

mia ellsworth planner

Like I said in that post, this year I am using the Mia Ellsworth planner and I absolutely loveeeee it. It’s customized, which is awesome because if you feel like you would enjoy my planner but you don’t actually need all the sections I’ve come up with, you can change it up! My layout base is the “Glazer” and I customized it to work for me.

I also love the size! It’s about as big as a traditional notebook and the pages are very thick and there’s no shadowing even when I color or use highlighter to block out times in the weekly schedule. I loved my Day Designer in past years, but I knew I needed something more portable this year.

mia ellsworth planner

The only cons I have about the ME planner are that the outside cover is definitely not as durable as what I’m used to. A few months into using it, the cover began peeling (it’s just thick laminate) which made me decide that next year I want to get the vinyl cover instead of the design! The vinyl is on the back of my planner and it has held up great! I think it would be fun to cover the plain white vinyl cover in Redbubble stickers or something.

Monthly View.

mia ellsworth planner monthly view

I use the monthly view to write down big assignments and exams to see what my month is looking like. I also  keep track of my workouts here in the monthly view and, as you can see, I’ve been filling my weekends with LOTS of spin classes!

Weekly Schedule.

mia ellsworth planner weekly view

 

mia ellsworth planner weekly view

Something I love is having my schedule laid out for me. I like to see what I’m doing during the day and since I have a different class every day, I like to see what I have up on my plate! I use the Zebra Midliner highlighters to block off my classes and color-code my to-do’s. Above are examples from different semesters of grad school! You can see I switch up the colors with every new class.

To Do Lists.

mia ellsworth planner weekly view

I am a big to-do list maker and I love making lists of things I need to complete. The feeling of checking something off of my list is the BEST. I have a to-do list for the week so I can see an overview of all the things I need to do, then a to-do list for the following week so I know what’s coming up. I also have a daily to-do list and a list of everything that’s due during that day. If that seems like a lot of lists to you, you’re right! But it helps me keep track of everything that’s due. Some weeks when I need a longer to-do list, I’ll use a sticky note too.

Reading.

mia ellsworth planner weekly view

I also have a section on the left that I can use to keep track of how many days a week I’ve been reading. Ryan uses his to track workouts so you can really customize it for whatever! As you can see, I haven’t been reading much lately but it’s always a good reminder for me!

I knew that in grad school I would need to be keeping track of a lot of different things at once so I needed to have the perfect planner! My ME planner has been a life saver so far and I’m already thinking about if I want to keep the same layout or switch it up for next year!

What planner are you using this year? Do you like it?

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4 Comments

  1. February 21, 2018 / 6:19 pm

    Okay that is seriously the cutest planner! I cannot go throughout my week without planning things. I don’t think I’d live without it. Love this post!!

    • February 22, 2018 / 2:31 pm

      Thanks girl! I am the same way, everything HAS to go in my planner!

  2. February 22, 2018 / 12:14 pm

    Ooh I LOVE this planner! I definitely need to check this out for grad school next year. I’m currently using a smaller sized daily planner and totally loving it, but for grad school I think I might need something more like this!

    • February 22, 2018 / 2:30 pm

      I love it! It’s so perfect and so portable! I loved my Day Designer last year but this one is just a lot more practical for me to be carrying around.

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