Hello everyone! Now it’s time to talk about my favourite part of uni life: stationery!
Pens
Of course there’re all kinds of writing tools available nowadays — ball pens, gel pens, fountain pens — with various colours and sizes. My favourite type of pens are gel pens. They are convenient to carry around, retain volumes of ink, can be checked easily, and the same brand of pens can provide you a consistent writing quality.
I’m a visual learning person, that’s why I love different colours of pens. They help me distinguish different content and improve my efficiency while doing revision. There’re six different colour pens in my bag, and I can use at least four different colours most of the time (You can imagine how colourful my notebook is).
I also like fountain pens. I have a fountain pen at home and I use it all the time. But the problem is, they need the ink supply, and nobody wants to carry a bottle of ink that could spill any time in their bag… So the fountain pens are more often for home use only. (But the fountain pen ink is one of the best things in the world! Some colours are amazing…)
Highlighters
Highlighters are very, very, very helpful in my study. I use them to mark important content, distinguish different topics, or just for fun because they look good. They help me recognise the important things effectively, especially when I have made three pages of lecture notes and I just want to find out a small thing the lecturer mentioned. The different colours also remind me of the content structure; for example, I usually use red for topics, green for subtitles, orange for next level, and purple for general content. The only thing that you need to ensure is that you don’t highlight everything in a paragraph — just highlight some core sentences. Even phrases would be enough to locate the critical information.
Binders/Folders
Folders are my secret weapon for organising all my materials. They’re easy and cheap to use. What you need is a folder, a stack of A4 paper, and a 2-hole punch. I use different colours for different kind of materials — white for all the lecture notes, yellow for all tutorial notes, and purple for revision purposes. This system works well for me — I can carry all my course materials in one folder. But one disadvantage is that the folder might get really heavy when it gets close to the end of the semester. In fact, my folder is already full in Week 5… I’m considering splitting it into two folders now.
Small Notebooks
Many people use phone reminders nowadays, but I still feel it’s better to use a pocket size notebook to plan my next few days — it feels so good when I cross out what I’ve finished! It’s also convenient to write down some thoughts and inspirations before you forget them, or draw some doodles when you feel like it. I’m currently using a pocket to-do list. Ticking the finish box is the motive for me to work on the tasks!
So, this is my experience of stationery, and I hope it helps. If you want to show your stationery and study space, we have a competition running all semester! Simply publish a photo of your study space in Instragram with the hashtag #fedunistudyspace to go in the draw to win a FedUni Keep Cup and a hard copy of the Referencing Guide!
-Lily