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Set up a weekly schedule

This step is time-consuming and a bit tedious, but is one of the most important to follow through on. When you're on an accelerated program, you do not have the luxury of "winging it." This schedule should be set up as a separate page for each week, and at the beginning of the week it needs to be printed and left out on your desk where you can see it every day. As you complete an assignment, take a pen and cross it off the list.

For this step I am going to go against my normal sermon and reiterate that this weekly schedule should NOT be put in your binder. It needs to be set out in plain view wherever you spend most of your time. It will keep your weekly requirements fresh in your mind and it will also act as a reminder to GET TO WORK! If it's sitting in your binder it can easily be ignored.

Here are my suggestions for how to prepare the schedule:

• Prepare Word docs of your weekly schedule before the semester starts, to include every week's schedule of assignments due for each and every week of class, taken from each syllabus. As the weeks go on, it's very possible that the instructor will add things in the announcements section that were not on the syllabus. Take these additional notes -- if they pertain to an upcoming assignment -- and update your Word document for that appropriate week. Always keep these Word docs as up-to-date as possible.
• Put a title heading for each class, with that week's assignments beneath it, all on a single document.
• Label the document with the week number as your main heading, and then save each week's document separately in your overall school directory, with the file name "week1.doc", "week2.doc", etc. Do not create one long Word doc with each week's assignments, as this can get too long and complicated to work with easily. Keep it easy by having separate documents for each week. Here's an example of a weekly schedule.