Staying organized in pharmacy school is a must to survive. Going into my professional years of the program I knew I was going to have to step up my game when it came to planning and staying on top of my school work and extra-curricular activities. Luckily, I discovered the Erin Condren planner! This planner is EVERYTHING. This is the third year in a row that I have ordered my planner from this company because it’s just that good. Not only does this planner have all the essential space you need but it has everything you could ever want also. This planner is totally customizable, like seriously you won’t even believe it. Every year I am still shocked at all the amazing details I can choose. Some of these include: the cover design including changing the colors in select designs, the spiral color (black, platinum, gold, rose gold), the weekly layout (horizontal, vertical, hourly), etc. They also have amazing planner accessories. My favorite are the clip-ins that snap perfectly into the spiral of your planner. There are so many options like grocery lists, to-do lists, wellness dashboards, monthly bill tracking… anything you could need help staying on top of they have!
I don’t know about you guys but when something is fully functional and absolutely adorable that is a huge win-win for me. I am more productive because I love the way my planner looks and it not only brightens my mood but it actually makes me want to keep using it! This year on top of my planner and the accessories, I also ordered a journal in the same design for all my blog brainstorming. Scroll down to see exactly what I use and how I stay organized in pharmacy school!
I live for this monthly calendar. Each of the boxes are big enough to fit mutliple things that I have going on in a single day. There is a note column on the side for anything I might need to remember for that month that doesn’t necessarily correlate with a specific date. As you can tell my planner is a little bare right now. I do not have any of my spring syllabus for classes yet but I’ll share what a typical month looks like once I have those!
I am a super visual person, when I glance at my calendar I want to automatically have an idea what my schedule looks like. To do this I color coordinate everything. Every class has its own color. If a class also has a lab associated with it like Advanced Practice Management I use a light color for the class and the darker color for lab. Right now for APM, I use light blue and navy blue. I also put a cloud around any exams I have because I know these require more of my time and I want them to really stand out to me when I look at my calendar.
In the past I have ordered the horizontal weekly layout, which is great for keeping track of all your homework or studying for the day. This year I decided to go with the vertical layout. This provides separation in the day from morning, afternoon and night. I currently have a lot of meetings happening at different times of the day, and lab in the morning. I like the visual separation of what times things are going on throughout the day.
The wellness log I am using to keep track of my water intake and exercise. You can also track what you eat in a day but I prefer to do this on my phone using MyFitnessPal. The meal planner has a backside for my grocery list making it perfect for planning. Note that I used a normal dry erase marker in the photo but I just ordered the Erin Condren wet erase markers. They allow you to write on all your inserts and then easily wipe them away with a damp cloth at the end of the week (so freaking cool).
This pouch is a life saver. I put all my important documents like my intern licenses in here and I won’t lie I would have totally lost these already if I didn’t do this. Bless you pouch.
I hope this planner inspires you to be a boss like it does for me! Best wishes in organizing and executing your plans for 2018.
Here’s a full list of what I got with links:
-Madeline
Greatt blog you have here