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This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at George Mason University chapter.

College has always been seen as a stressful time for students attending, but it has arguably never been more stressful. Over the years, college has steadily gotten more expensive and more demanding. Going to college during a pandemic presents its own new set of problems and added stressors for college students. 

Many colleges and universities across the United States are wrapping up their midterm seasons, and college students may be beginning to wonder if this spring semester will ever end. Burnout is a very real thing, and thousands of college students are feeling it. Heavy course loads and busy schedules are leaving students feeling overwhelmed, frazzled, and even disorganized. 

Enter Notion, a website that allows its users to create their own custom organizational space for themselves. It’s easier to modify and edit than a physical planner, and you can make it themed however you want and have it contain whatever information you want. Notion has the ability to make getting organized and staying organized fun. Especially for overwhelmed college students who need all the fun they can get. 

The one thing that makes Notion such a great tool for college students is that it’s so versatile. Not only can it be used for school, but it can also be used as a social calendar, a place to keep watchlists and reading lists, and even a place to budget. Notion is a website where you can keep everything in one place, making it the perfect thing for college students who are on the go. 

For the average college student, assignment due dates would be the most obvious choice for something to include in a Notion page. You can create a daily checklist for assignments you need to do or a table for each class that has that class’s assignments and due dates. You can even have your course schedule put into your Notion as well. Notion is also a great place to brainstorm ideas for projects and create study guides for exams. 

Notion is also a fantastic place for planning your personal life, just as much as it is for organizing your academic life. You can keep your social calendar on Notion, the birthdays of family and friends, and watchlists and reading lists of movies you want to watch and books you want to read. You can also link playlists and videos to your Notion. 

With Notion, the world is your oyster, and you can make that world  completely unique to you. You can customize the color and layout of your Notion pages, and you can make the icons and headers for those pages whatever you want. Notion gives you the freedom to design a workspace and/or creative space that meets your needs and works well with what you want to get accomplished. It gives you numerous options to organize your pages, such as giving you different options for heading sizes, text color and size, as well as options for different bulleted lists, numbered lists, and toggle lists. When it comes to customizing your Notion, the possibilities are practically endless. 

If you think that your current organizational method is not working out for you, now might be a great time to give Notion a try. Lugging around a physical planner can be a hassle, and having your due dates and schedules all on your phone could be overwhelming, so having everything you need in one place might be something that will work out for you. Notion is also available as an app in the IOS app store, so you don’t even need your laptop for it! Notion is worth a try, even if it turns out to not be for you. 

While Notion does work for some people, it may not be the solution for everyone. Some people may need to write things down in order to remember them, so a physical planner might work better for them. For others, having their due dates in their phone calendar might work better for them because they might forget to check their Notion on a regular basis. There are many great features about Notion and many perks of having one, but it won’t be the organizational solution for everyone, and that’s okay. People have different methods and ways of operating, so it’s natural for those people to have different styles of organization that fit them as well. 

To put it frankly, having Notion does not a Notion person make. Having Notion might not be the magic touch to make your life completely organized, but it might give you a helping hand. If you stick with Notion and make using it a habit, it could end up helping you out a lot. It might not be as big of a deal as free college tuition or student loan forgiveness, but it could be a little something to make the rest of the semester more manageable. 

At the heart of this suggestion to try Notion is encouragement for all of those college students out there who may feel like this semester is lasting an eternity, and their list of assignments is going to take an eternity to get through. You’ve got this, with or without Notion.

Elena Haley

George Mason University '25

Hi! My name is Elena and I'm a freshman at George Mason University. I'm a communications major and a member of the Honors College. I've been a member of the George Mason HerCampus chapter since Fall of 2021 and have been acting as a chapter leader since Fall of 2022.