Getting organized…
It’s an easy problem to fix…if you’re willing to change some poor habits

By: Avery Ross, Editor

Even though many of our teachers preach the fact that organization is a skill that will help you in your present studies at McCallion, they are also preaching that organization is a skill you will need for the rest of your life, whether you become a teacher, a lawyer or even a mechanic. Most people aren’t born organized, and it’s not something you can learn overnight, so I’ve decided to offer our help to those HMC students who we like to call the ‘not so organized’. After carefully observing some of the habits and unique lifestyles of our disorganized students I came up with a few tips that could just help cure their problem.  

The first major similarity found when observing the not so organized students was that they all had zip up, all in one, binders. With those types of binders, students are tempted and in fact inclined to stuff papers in them instead of taking the time to open the binder and neatly put the papers away. Then, when the time comes (which it always does) when they need paper or a homework assignment, everything is crammed in the binder and they can’t find what they are looking for. If by some act of luck they did find it, the paper was all scrunched up and messy. The solution to this is easy. If you know you’re the type of person who will most likely do this, get a non-zipper binder so everything will fall out if you don’t put it away properly. 

In addition to the catch all, zippered binder everything of every subject was in one big binder. The teachers at HMC like every subject to have its own binder. This isn’t to make everyone’s lives harder or to make your arms hurt four times more than normally when going from class to class, it’s to prevent the basic organization problems previously mentioned. If everything is in the same binder, stuff can get lost or mixed up in other subjects, and make it hard, and sometimes impossible to find. My advice is to get 4 binders, and get rid of that one binder strategy! Let’s face it. Despite the fact that it’s easier to carry from class to class, it’s a recipe for disaster.

It was also noticed that the disorganized few “lost” their homework, only to find it in another binder hours or even days later. The situation is all too familiar. The disorganized student is asked for the assignment, frantically searches for it, but is unable to find it until they open the binder of the class that used the binder that they had mistakenly put the assignment into. Even though they had successfully completed the assignment, they now had to face a late penalty charge or, in some rare cases, they been given a zero or R for not handing it in on time. Our suggestion, put stuff in the right binder! Math assignments go in the math binder, French in the French binder etc. That way it’s in there when you need it. No lost marks, no angry teachers, no concerned parents phoning in asking teachers for another chance. 

Similar to the previous observation, the disorganised ones continuously take the wrong binder. Commonly we see our disorganized students buy 4 binders that are similar looking in style and colour. In a rush to get to class from their lockers, many of them do not bother to check the binder to make sure they have the right one. The way to solve this is to colour-code or label all of your binders along the spine so that they are easily recognized. 

Lastly, I noticed that the disorganized ones would conveniently forget to do their homework. When wondering why they usually notice that they hadn’t written anything in their agendas, or as some call it, their “Binder Reminder”. The way to fix that would be to take two minutes at the end of every class to write everything down in their agenda. It seems simple enough but many of our disorganized students can’t take that two minutes to put all papers safely away and record what they have to do for homework in their agenda. 12 minutes a day could save the disorganized student much agony and frustration and it would actually improve their marks. 

Organization is an important, and necessary skill to develop, not only for life at HMC but for life in general. As a kid, these habits are easy to learn but as you get older, the learning is not as easy to develop. It’s time for our disorganized students to make these changes. If they do, teachers, parents and they will be much happier.