Hey all!

Back with another blog post after a long hiatus. I kinda dropped the ball on blogging… as I do every time school restarts. So let’s not talk about it… ¯\_(?)_/¯

Today I’m back with another blog post about my bullet journal. I made one of these back in 2017 when I first started bullet journaling. Since then, I think I’ve gotten a little bit more ‘minimalistic’ with it and kept only spreads that I know I would use and keep up with.

This is also some bullet journaling spreads geared towards college students/students in general (as you will see in a bit!)–but also at the same time, feel free to modify/add any of these ideas to fit your own needs! That’s what bullet journaling is about. 

Here’s more ideas from my bullet journal spreads from 2017, if you’re new to bullet journaling.

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First off, THE SUPPLIES!

I like to keep my supplies fairly simple. If you’ve been following me a while, you might know that my favorite pens to use were the muji 0.38 pens. I bought a pack of 10 a while back and that was quickly used up. I found those to be fairly expensive, so I’ve now switched to the pilot 0.38 gel pens. The good thing about these pens is that they come with refills also! With the mujis, I found that trying to get the refills for the pens was actually more expensive than just buying the pens themselves–but that’s not the case with the pilot pens. As far as writing with them, I found them to be pretty similar, though the muji pens definitely have a ‘sharper’ feel to them when you write, but unless you’re super picky, you won’t notice the difference.

For the notebook, I have the Leuchtturm1917 bullet journal. The brand hasn’t changed since my 2017 post, but the difference is that I got the bullet journal version. ugh. It’s not that much of a difference from the normal Leuchtturm notebooks, but it does have several pages of explanation and ‘how to bullet journal’ type instructions embedded within. I don’t like this as much since I’ve never actually even referenced those pages and it feels like less of “my own” with those pages embedded. What I do like, however, is that it has 3 page ribbons (rather than 2!).

Lastly, (not pictured), I use zebra’s mildliners for a ‘splash’ of color in my pages. They’re just mild highlighters, nothing fancy. Kind of a “cult favorite” in the bullet journal world BUT I don’t personally think they’re *that* special. Just comes in some nice, subtle colors, that’s all.

Oh, I also stuck some stickers on there for fun; the journal itself does not come with them! I got the stickers from Aliexpress — there are a lot of cute, cheap stationary on there (if you don’t mind the long shipping time!)

The Spreads

As a college student, I more or less function on a semester-by-semester basis. So, instead of doing my future log on the entirety of 2018, I only wrote out the spring semester:

I separated each page into two columns, one for the dates and the other for major events. On the bottom of each page, I left a little bit of space for notes and goals. This is also where I put my first ribbon. Pretty straightforward!

On the next page, I listed out all the important dates for Cornell’s academic calendar. This will just be useful to reference. It’s all listed on Cornell’s website, but I thought it would be nice to include somewhere in my journal as well. I could have just put it in my future log (and I might!) but I didn’t want these dates mixed in with other stuff (such as events, birthdays, etc.)

And on the next page, I have my weekly schedule. The top bar has the days of the week, and on the side, the hours.

This isn’t quite populated yet, mainly because the semester hasn’t started yet, but also because I don’t want people to know where I am at every second of the day… 😏

Once I populate this page, I expect it to have a little more color (though I’m not huge on color coding, so we’ll see), and of course with all calendars/schedules, it’s subject to change, so I’m planning on using this in addition to my google calendar, and would probably use it less once I get used to my semester schedule.

On the next two pages, I have my course and grade trackers. The course tracker is a place where I will be filling out syllabus information, instructor’s contact info, office hours, etc. As I mentioned, the semester hasn’t started yet, so this is blank! But this will make it easy so that in the middle of the semester, when I forget how much an exam is worth in the class, I can just reference this page.

If you see in the orchestra box, I already filled it out, haha. Those are just the basic requirements to pass the class–so I can check them off as I go along.

The grade tracker is just that–a place to write down the grades. Keeps me on top of things, and though grades are always (mostly) a little dependent on the curve of the class and the professor’s generosity, this would minimize the surprises when it comes to the end of the semester. As you can see, it’s fairly simple, just four columns with the column headings as the class.

I left the left hand side page blank–not sure what I will do with that yet, but perhaps some sort of assignment tracker of some kind (or if the grade tracker bleeds to the next page? who knows).

And after that, I move onto the month and weekly spreads!

In my 2017 post, my month spread was quite pretty and elaborate. Now I just draw some boxes for a calendar and call it a day…

My weekly spreads are equally simple. Just some bullets and headings as dates.

This is definitely a big change from 2017, where I made a lot of effort to make my bullet journal pretty. But as the year went on, I realized I had less time to focus on the aesthetics of my journal. And after all, the bullet journal should be functional, right? So this year I’m planning on putting function as a first and aesthetics as a second.

And to be honest, I love the nice, clean lines!

Hope you guys find this helpful! I might make more bullet journal posts in the future (if I can keep this blogging streak, lol).

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psst! as usual, all opinions are my own but I have used some Amazon affiliate links above! If you choose to purchase anything through my links, I will receive a small commission. Don’t worry, the price for you to buy doesn’t change, it just supports me & my work if you do!