Question:

The backpack that I schlep to campus each day weighs about 80 pounds. How can I prevent back problems and lighten my load?

Answer:

It is essential to maintain your health during the long tenure trek. Reducing your daily backpack load is important.

One of the students who took my UNC class "Graduate School Survival Skills" had an organization system that many of her peers adopted.

Yu-Ling was finishing up her course work, and preparing for comps. At home she had files for each of her classes. Each evening, she would go through her files and pull out any articles, notes or completed assignments that she needed for the next day. (She always included an extra article or two to read on her bus commute and during other periods of the day when she had free time.)

Next, she would put the articles in sheet protectors clear, multi-page document protectors and place them all in a three ring binder. She also kept pens, paper, sticky notes, her daily to-do list, and her daily schedule in the same notebook.

Voila!
A daily resource binder weighing less than two pounds.

She also tried to keep her total backpack weight down by taking no more than two books at a time to campus. When possible, she tried to take a floppy or zip disc and work on library computers rather than her laptop. When she needed to take lots of books out of the library, she would take her small, carryon suitcase that rolled along behind her. She did not mind looking like a traveler if it kept her from getting back spasms!

What appealed to other grad students about her method was that the articles never got torn, and they never had to spend unnecessary time hole-punching individual articles.

Students who were preparing proposals or writing their dissertations also found her system helpful. They not only placed unread articles in their daily notebooks, but sometimes added hard-copy sections of their own manuscripts to proofread during their day. Professors have adapted versions of this system to create a daily teaching notebook.

What do you think of Yu-Ling's method? Do you have organization systems that you find particularly helpful?
I'd like to hear about them.

Good luck,
Mary McKinney, Ph.D.