How I Use Notion for School | University Notes System for Back to School! 📚 (+ free templates!)

Summary

In this video, the creator shares their love for Notion, a versatile planning and organization tool that has become indispensable during their university years. They provide a detailed walkthrough of their Notion setup for their final year, including a dedicated page for their dissertation. The creator also highlights the use of templates, the learning curve, and the benefits of using Notion for academic and personal organization. They showcase their Life Hub, University page, class notes, assignment tracker, and City Pages, emphasizing the app's customization and efficiency in managing their studies and life.

Takeaways

• 📚 Notion is an essential planning tool for the speaker, used extensively during university and recommended for students.
• 🎓 The speaker is heading into their final year of university, with a focus on organizing both academic and personal life.
• 📝 Notion is used for a variety of purposes, including to-do lists, habit tracking, academic notes, course tracking, and dissertation planning.
• 💡 The speaker provides a demonstration of their customized Notion setup, designed to manage tasks, goals, reflections, and inspiration.
• 🌍 A special feature is the creation of pages for different cities where the speaker has lived or will live, such as Berlin and Buenos Aires.
• 📑 The speaker uses a structured system in Notion for tracking class notes, assignments, and research for their cognitive neuroscience studies.
• 📅 The speaker has a Capstone (dissertation) page, with organized timelines, goals, research notes, and meeting records with their advisor.
• ✨ Notion's customizable interface is highlighted, with features like widgets, countdowns, and side-by-side block editing.
• 🎨 Despite not focusing much on aesthetics, the speaker enjoys adding personal touches to their Notion pages, like motivational quotes and images.
• 🆓 Notion is free for students and educators, and the speaker encourages beginners to start with templates and simple functions like to-do lists.

Q & A

What is the main purpose of the video?

The main purpose of the video is to showcase how the creator uses Notion for planning and organizing their final year of university, including their dissertation.

Why does the creator consider Notion a valuable tool for university life?

The creator finds Notion valuable for university life because it serves as an incredible planning and organization system, allowing for customization with building blocks that cater to various needs such as to-do lists, habit trackers, course tracking, note-taking, and inspiration logging.

What is the significance of the 'Life Hub' in the creator's Notion setup?

The 'Life Hub' is a central location in the creator's Notion setup where everything from to-do lists, articles, goals, reflections, and academic-related information is organized, making it the core of their daily planning and organization.

How does the creator use Notion for academic note-taking?

The creator uses Notion for academic note-taking by creating a dedicated page for each class, organizing notes by class type, attaching readings, and using toggle lists for study guide questions. They also include a summary section and questions for future review.

What is the 'Capstone' page in the creator's Notion setup, and why was it created?

The 'Capstone' page is dedicated to the creator's dissertation project. It was created to centralize all related information, research, and planning in one place, preventing the scattering of documents and pages across different locations.

How does the creator use Notion for assignment tracking?

The creator uses Notion for assignment tracking by creating a page where they can mark the status of each assignment, such as 'not started,' 'outlined,' 'drafting,' and 'submitted,' allowing for a visual overview of their progress.

What is the significance of the 'City Pages' in the creator's Notion setup?

The 'City Pages' are used by the creator to collate all information related to their study abroad experience, including bucket lists, inspiration, and research about the city they will be living in, aiding in organization and preparation.

How does the creator use widgets from Indifi in Notion?

The creator uses widgets from Indifi to embed various elements into their Notion pages, such as countdowns, trackers, and weather updates, enhancing the functionality and interactivity of their pages.

What is the creator's recommendation for students who are new to Notion?

The creator recommends that new students start with the most basic functions like to-do lists and note-taking, and then explore templates to get a feel for the platform, emphasizing that the initial learning curve is worth the effort for the long-term benefits.

What is the 'casual magic of the day' mentioned by the creator?

The 'casual magic of the day' is a segment where the creator shares a heartwarming or interesting observation from their daily life, in this case, observing two dogs playing with a hay bale in a field.

Outlines

00:00

📚 Back to School with Notion

The speaker expresses excitement about using Notion for back-to-school planning, highlighting its versatility as a planning and organization tool. They share their personal experience using Notion throughout university, emphasizing its importance in their academic life. The speaker provides a glimpse into their Notion setup, which includes to-do lists, habit trackers, course tracking, note-taking, and inspiration documentation. They also mention that Notion is free for students and educators, encouraging viewers to explore its features. The speaker credits Amelia Croner for inspiring their Notion page designs and promises to share templates and resources for viewers to follow along.

05:02

📒 Organizing University Life in Notion

The speaker delves into their Notion setup for university, showcasing a detailed and organized system. They discuss their 'Life Hub,' which serves as a central location for various tasks and inspirations. The university section includes class notes, a Capstone (dissertation) page, assignment trackers, and favorite readings. The speaker also explains how they use Notion for roommate coordination, sharing essential links and information. They provide a step-by-step guide on how they take class notes, including creating templates, organizing materials, and using active recall techniques. The speaker also shares their assignment tracking system, which helps them visualize and manage their academic workload effectively.

10:04

🌟 Preparing for Study Abroad with Notion

The speaker discusses their use of Notion for studying abroad, particularly for their upcoming move to buen idz. They demonstrate how they create 'City Pages' in Notion to compile research, bucket lists, and inspiration for each city they plan to visit. The speaker shows off a countdown widget, a gallery view for potential volunteering opportunities, and a customizable 'call out' feature to express excitement. They emphasize the importance of Notion in their academic and personal life, providing a comprehensive overview of their setup and the potential for others to adopt similar strategies. The speaker concludes by expressing gratitude to Notion for sponsoring the video and offers well-wishes for the academic year ahead.

Keywords

💡Notion

Notion is a versatile organizational and planning tool that allows users to create and customize pages for various purposes, such as to-do lists, habit trackers, and note-taking. In the video, the creator uses Notion extensively for academic planning, class notes, and tracking assignments, showcasing its utility in managing university life and enhancing productivity.

💡Back to School

The term 'back to school' is used in the context of preparing for the academic year, which is a central theme of the video. The creator discusses setting up Notion pages specifically for the final year of university, indicating the importance of organization and planning at the beginning of an academic term.

💡Dissertation

A dissertation is a significant academic paper that is often required for graduation in higher education. In the video, the creator mentions setting up a Notion page for their dissertation, which will be a major focus of their final year, highlighting the tool's role in managing large and complex projects.

💡Widgets

Widgets are interactive elements that can be embedded into Notion pages to add functionality, such as countdowns, trackers, and weather updates. The creator uses widgets from a website called indifi to enhance their Notion pages, demonstrating how widgets can provide additional utility and visual appeal to the user's pages.

💡Class Notes

Class notes refer to the records or summaries taken during lectures or classes. The video script describes how the creator organizes their class notes in Notion, using templates and sections to categorize information, which is crucial for academic success and review.

💡Assignment Tracker

An assignment tracker is a tool used to monitor the progress of various assignments. The creator mentions creating an assignment tracker in Notion to visually manage and keep track of the status of multiple academic papers, illustrating the tool's utility in project management.

💡University Life

University life encompasses the academic, social, and personal experiences of students. The video discusses various aspects of university life, such as roommate coordination, class participation, and study abroad preparation, all of which are managed and organized through Notion.

💡Study Abroad

Study abroad refers to the experience of attending university in a different country. The creator is preparing to study abroad in buen idz and uses Notion to organize information, create a bucket list, and explore volunteer opportunities, showing how the tool can aid in planning and adapting to new environments.

💡Bucket List

A bucket list is a collection of experiences or goals one wants to achieve. The video mentions creating a bucket list for the city the creator will be studying in, which includes activities and places to visit, demonstrating how Notion can be used to plan and prioritize personal goals.

💡Organizational System

An organizational system is a set of methods or tools used to arrange and manage tasks, information, or resources. The video emphasizes the role of Notion as an organizational system, helping the creator to structure their academic workload, maintain to-do lists, and keep track of various projects and interests.

💡Customization

Customization refers to the process of adapting or modifying a product or service to better suit individual needs. The video script highlights the customizable nature of Notion, allowing the creator to tailor pages, widgets, and templates to their specific requirements for university life and personal projects.

Highlights

Introduction to using Notion for back-to-school organization.

Notion as a versatile planning and organization tool.

Personal experience with Notion throughout university life.

Notion's free access for students and educators.

Inspiration from Amelia Croner's Notion pages.

The learning curve of Notion and its initial overwhelming nature.

Overview of the Life Hub setup in Notion.

Customization of the daily to-do list in Notion.

University page organization and room sharing in Notion.

Class notes organization and the creation of a class notes template.

Active learning through the use of toggle lists and active recall in Notion.

Assignment tracker setup for managing academic work.

Dissertation page setup inspired by Amelia Croner.

City Pages for organizing study abroad experiences in Notion.

Use of widgets from indifi for adding functionality to Notion pages.

Encouragement for students to try Notion for academic and personal organization.

Sharing of templates for beginners to get started with Notion.

Reflections on the final year of university and the bittersweet feelings associated with it.

Casual magic of the day featuring wholesome moments with dogs.

Transcripts

[Music]

hey there guys and welcome back to

unjaded Jade ohir I look so

unnecessarily dramatic but I wanted to

just go all out for a bit of back to

school if you've been following me for a

while you would know that I love notion

I've been using it for most of my

university life now and I'm going into

final year next year and I genuinely

cannot imagine my life without it it is

this incredible planning tool

organization system where it basically

gives you building blocks to customize

it in any way which is useful for your

life everything from to-do list to Habit

trackers tracking all your courses

making class notes writing down any

inspiration that you have keeping track

of stuff like it's just it's everything

that you could ever want today I'm going

to be showing you how I have set up my

notion page for back to school for my

final year of uni I'm also doing a

dissertation next year and I've made

myself a page for that I really hope you

find this useful if you're already a

notion user or if you're looking for

some kind of system to improve the way

that you do school notion is completely

free for students and Educators so get

yourself on that if you're a student so

many of my pages I have taken

inspiration from Amelia croner who is a

wonderful alumni of my University and

she makes Incredible notion pages so I

will link down below all the templates

that I got inspiration from while we're

here I just want to say the learning

curve for notion is steep it feels

overwhelming when you first see all the

options that you can have but I promise

you if after this video video You Take 5

minutes 10 minutes to download notion to

try and work it out to watch a few

videos download some templates and you

make that effort now I promise it will

serve you well in the

future Welcome to My Life Hub this is

where everything happens I've changed it

a little bit over the years but

generally it's kind of simple here I've

got a cute little quot up here I've got

a cover image that I took that just

brings me peace here I've got continuous

things so everything from my to-do list

to putting in articles that are

interesting for my future career my

goals and Reflections for this year here

I have General inspiration so for

example if I listen to a podcast and I

want to write down my thoughts I can put

it in here down here I have all the

academic good stuff so my class notes

unihub Capstone which is what my

University call dissertation

miscellaneous assignment tracker

favorite readings and then YouTube I

have video ideation and execution so

this is where I think about what kind of

videos I want to make make in a Canon

board structure yeah basically

everything to do with having a YouTube

channel and then I customized this I put

one of my favorite songs which is

Butterfly by I play

[Music]

it that's just my Anthem um it's just

good energy and I love having it on my

Hub I've also recently been getting into

widgets from indifi which is a free

website which is basically where you can

embed everything from countdowns to

trackers weather and here I just put in

the weather for buen o cirz which is

where I'm studying abroad next year this

is my general Hub okay so my daily to-do

list if we just head into today you can

see this is my very basic way that I

organize my life some people do this in

a gorgeous aesthetic way I don't I just

have a to-do list page where I generally

separates so admin content academic and

making a page like this is very

accessive POS even if you've never used

notion before every time I click the

forward slash I'm given all these

options so for example I can create a

new heading another subheading of tasks

that I have to do relates

to work or like

part-time part-time job and then again

if I click the forward slash I can

create a du list and now very easily I

can write all the things that I need to

do rewrite CV

send out to five companies and I can

come back here can easily tick them off

love it easy Todo list works for me I

often come back from uni and just blurt

down everything I need to get done

notion also allows you to keep your

favorites on the side so I often just

access my to-do list page from here so

back to my life Hub and let's go into

University this is my hectic little

University page over here I've made like

a roommate space for every room that

I've lived in at Uni so in Berlin I

lived with my two friends Gabriel and L

and we made a page where we shared

important links information about rent

um anything we wanted each other to have

easy access to and they all have notion

accounts so it's really easy to create a

page together when I move to buen idz

and meet my new roommates I also going

to make us an ocean page over here I

have some handy links that I might need

so calendar Google Drive manaa registra

here I've got all the classes that I've

taken so far with all the professors and

links to notes I've got my very

important class notes page which I'll

show you later My Capstone page buo sidz

Soul Berlin and in each of the City

Pages I've just written down things I

could do to prepare bucket list ideas

and inspiration for where I wanted to go

in each Place Berlin I also have my

bucket list and

inspiration here I have a general

calendar where I can add in stuff about

University so for example moving to Bono

sidz um I have my flight details just

important dates to keep track of and

then if we go into class notes which is

also in my favorites this is where my

life kind of happens for every class I

take at University I make my notes Here

I can section off the Class Type whether

it's an assignment or a class or Summer

Prep or a summary I can add in any

materials which I don't tend to do

because they're on the University page

anyway and every time I click new I can

click new class notes and I've created

this template for myself I'm going to

walk you through how I take notes for

University okay let's imagine my class

today is on visual attention blind sight

and change blindness I study a cognitive

Neuroscience degree so this is just one

of the classes what my University does

is it has a study guide where I'm asked

some kind of key questions to guide my

reading so for example before I enter

this class I should be able to say what

are the key features of blindsight what

specific kinds of abilities do we

observe blah blah blah what have more

recent Imaging studies suggested how

could plastic be relevant and then here

are all the readings that I need to do

for this class and then I also need to

do some pre-class work I would go to my

class note template and make a copy of

the title of the class and I go session

ss52 type class this is not an

assignment so I would not fill in the

stage and then I can attach the readings

if I want I copy and paste my study

guide questions and I turn them all

into a toggle list the reason I do that

is future me can come back to this page

and ask myself these questions before I

find the answer okay then I do my

forward slash I create a heading three

reading one and then just copy and paste

the name of it and then underneath here

I would just make my general notes about

that reading so here we go I've got

summary main text

images and I would repeat the same

process for all the papers in this class

there's a lot of

readings sometimes my professor is

really lovely and will highlight the

parts that I actually need to read um

that are most relevant to the class so I

go ahead I make my notes on this wow so

so much reading I'm not looking forward

to last year of Yi ah so much and then

once I've made all my notes from all the

readings I can come back here and I can

write myself a general summary this is

mainly to test my own understanding of

the class like what are the key points I

write it in this little summary box I'll

fill in the study guide questions at the

end just to make sure that I've actively

understood what I need to know and also

that I can answer these before the class

and then really important I will write

down three questions to ask future me

this is to help me recall the knowledge

in the future so like active recall

flash card kind of questions for example

what is the definition of blindsight

very simple but just useful for me to

come back to this page and quickly

refresh so that is how I use my class

notes you have them all here when it's

an assignment I just use it to um draft

out any of the research for my paper

lots and lots of classes the beauty of

notion as well is that I can also filter

this so for example I can click filter

and click class and if I only want to

see my ss52 classes I just click ss52

and all of a sudden I've got all my

notes for this class something I also

created is an assignment tracker this

works by linking anything that I Mark as

an assignment and also putting it into

this page so during the term I can write

up to like 30 assignments which are just

papers of around 1,000 to 1,500 words

and when I'm working on them I can keep

them in not started or if I draft them

out I can put them in outlined if I'm

starting to write them I can put them in

drafting and then when they get

submitted I put them here uh and I think

the beauty of that is I can just really

visually see where I'm at with all my

assignments it's super simple I can also

go back easily and find my assignments

and once I've submitted them I'll put

the link to them in my notion okay so

coming back to my life Hub we've seen

class notes we've seen unihub we've seen

the assignment tracker favorite readings

is just quite basic it's just me

attaching my favorite readings but

Capstone is where we're going to go next

this is my page for my dissertation and

it was really inspired by Amelia croner

who graduated from my University I've

been given a Capstone advisor so any

meetings that I have with her I can just

put my quick notes in here um everything

from inspiration for cool dissertations

to research that I've done it all goes

here I didn't have a page for a while

and I just found myself constantly

creating documents and pages and

everything was very scattered so I'm

glad that I have this now my

dissertation is going to be on something

to do with the science of learning so

I've got my literature review of study

skill papers meetings feasibility risk

analysis there's so many very ratic

things you have to do for a Capstone to

make sure that it doesn't include human

subjects I've got my monthly goals this

is very inaccurate but I've got like a

timeline which I don't use but I will

eventually use next year and that's My

Capstone and I really love how you can

change the icons on notion and I

purposely made this one a mountain

because I feel like it's going to be a a

climb get Miley Cyrus out those are most

of my class notes and I've updated them

all for the term ahead but one more

thing that I want to show you that I

love using notion for for my study

abroad and for going to University

is my City Pages I'm moving to buen idz

in 1 week 4 days 9 hours apparently this

countdown is a widget that I got from

indifi I love collating everything that

I'm learning about a city into a otion

page so that future me can you know

quickly scan see all the areas for

example like I've been researching the

different barriers of

um VZ and it's just really helpful it

helps me be organized it helps me make

the most of being in the city create a

bucket list of things I want to do I've

been looking at volunteering

opportunities so I created this gallery

view of uh different places that I might

want to work at oh here's the image it's

loaded yay I love how customizable

notion is I'm not really an aesthetic

Queen but I'm trying to be and I saw

some people using these like

dramatic sparkly things so I added did

those which I think looks cute here I

just made a call out moment which I can

show you how to do again you just click

that forward slash you can go down they

even have a quote option but I love this

call out I can change this and I can

write anything from I'm so

excited and the beauty of notion is that

everything is like a block so you can

always just move it around you can even

make it side by side with an existing

widget and I can add something else here

there are so many things I'm not going

to show in this video because I do want

to focus on how I'm using it for my

final year of uni but I have a whole

video on how I've used notion for my

goals and Reflections for this year like

New Year's resolutions habit tracking I

used it to plan my book I use it to plan

all my YouTube content as I said and

that's a whole element of me using

notion if you're a student I can't

recommend it enough like I can't

remember my life before I started using

notion I don't know what I did I don't

know where I put stuff like this is just

amazing it also has an app like

lifechanging stuff I'm going to leave a

bunch of my templates down below so if

you have never heard of notion you have

no idea where to start you're a total

beginner then I highly recommend trying

out some templates you literally just

click it you click duplicate and Bam

it's yours you can customize it how you

like you can use it how you like just

try it it's worth it like try the most

basic functions like the to-do list and

maybe making some notes and I think

slowly you'll get into it more as you

learn more I hope you guys found this

useful I feel so grateful to notion for

sponsoring today's video and letting me

go through my beloved notion life Hub

I'm sending you all the love and luck

for the academic year ahead if it's also

your final year of uni then I hope you

relate to my bitter sweetness like I'm

excited to soak it all up but it's also

sad because it's the last year it's

strange one my casual magic of the day

let me think okay I was on a walk with

my dog and I saw these other two dogs

playing with like a hay bale in the

field and it was so cute they just look

like best friends and they were like

throwing this hay at each other um very

wholesome stuff have a wonderful rest of

your day bye