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Ditch Your Planner and Start a Bullet Journal

This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at Colby chapter.

Bullet journaling is not only a creative outlet that gives you an excuse to sit down and doodle once a week, but it’s also a fun method of organization that you might not have known you needed. A bullet journal is a notebook that can be anything you want it to be. It’s your own custom planner where you can organize anything from to-do lists, sleep trackers, ideas, and more. If you want to start bullet journaling or need some inspiration for your upcoming October layout, look no further.

 

Photo courtesy of the author.

Photo courtesy of the author

One of the best parts of bullet journaling is getting to whip out your colored pencils and markers. At the start of the semester, I like to draw something fun to get excited about the upcoming season. I’ve also started making a page dedicated to my weekly schedule, where I color code classes and extracurriculars I know I have every week. Having this laid out makes it so much easier to schedule meetings with professors or make plans with friends.

 

 

Photo courtesy of the author.

My calendar layouts tend to be pretty uncomplicated. I like to see everything clearly and without distractions because the daily boxes are so small, but of course feel free to get creative here and make the pages as themed or colored as you want. Having a calendar like this is a great way to mark any important dates for that month, such as school breaks, birthdays, or midterms.

 

Photo courtesy of the author.

A simple weekly layout is a great way to keep track of the different things you need to get done each day. I also appreciate a nice, neat weekly layout because, let’s be honest, no one has a ton of time every Sunday night to draw out an eleborate layout for the next week. This gets the job done and is still aesthetically pleasing. Something I like to include is a shopping list as the last box in my weekly spreads. This way, I can add to the list whenever I think of something and I always know where to find it.

 

Photo courtesy of the author.

At the start of each month I usually like to add a couple fun pages in my bullet journal. For October, I chose to start a dream log and a page to record what movies I’ve been watching. As you can probably tell I had a lot of fun making the movie page, which was inspired by posts I found on Pinterest. Pinterest has a ton of great ideas for bullet journaling, and I highly recommend searching there for more inspiration!

Sarah is a current senior at Colby from Westchester, New York. She is a psychology major and art minor.