Submitted by: Sophia Birch, VP of Development
For most of us, the school year has started up again, and with it comes an important question- what kind of school supplies should we use this year? And while this probably isn’t as critical as deciding the colleges we’re going to go to or the career path we’re going to start down, it does help to have the right materials for the job. Today we’ll be taking a look at the school supplies in my bookbag, and how I use them to make my school day organized, efficient, and fun.
The first (and most important) item in my backpack is an 18-month Happy Planner. In this planner, I mark down all of my assignments, important dates, and work schedule so that I know exactly what I’m doing and when. Although this planner is a bit more expensive than a normal one, it makes up for it by having places to add pages and more space to make notes. Without a planner, I would definitely struggle to balance my time, making this the most important school supply I own.
Next up is my trusty Texas Instruments calculator. I’ve used this calculator for almost three years, and it’s still as reliable as the day I took it out of the package. It has everything you need to succeed in math class – trig functions, operations, and exponents. This simple calculator is dependable, portable, and absolutely essential.
Another school supply that I love are Pilot G2 Gel pens. Not only are they cheap and can be bought in bulk, but they’re also easy to write with. I use these pens for making neat notes, correcting papers, and doodling in the margins.
For doing homework, I like to use Pen and Gear 0.7 mechanical pencils. I like these pencils because they’re sturdy, so they won’t shatter if you grip the pencil too hard. They’re also refillable, so I don’t have to make constant trips to the pencil sharpener, and they come with a hand grip attached. The drawback to mechanical pencils is that they need a supply of lead, so you have to stay stocked up. However, I’ve found that if you use 0.7 or 0.9 lead, it will break less than smaller types, and you will need to refill the pencil less frequently.
The last school supply that I own are two D-Ring binders that I put all of my core classes in. To minimize stops at my locker, I put classes that are back-to-back in the same binder, so all I have to do is switch from the Trigonometry notes section to the Spanish notes section when I go from class to class. Despite their durability and efficiency, these binders are large and difficult to find space for, so if your locker or backpack is already crammed full of textbooks, I wouldn’t recommend this system for you.
That’s everything that I use for school supplies in my locker and backpack. Hopefully this helped you in some way! If you want to share your list of school supplies or have a cool organizational system, feel free to email me at vpdevelopment@nebraskafccla.org for a chance to be featured on NE FCCLA social media! Have a great school year!